342 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
hills, and there still were the thief and the dog. 
"We all went to supper, and in the twilight of 
evening, in pity to the famished and frightened 
culprit, the dog was withdrawn and he was per¬ 
mitted to slink away home. He never stole ap¬ 
ples again, or any thing else from our father 
while Drive and old Shadrach remained on the 
farm .—Albany Register. 
Written for the American Agriculturist. 
A SOLITARY RIDE ON THE PRAIRIE. 
BY MINNIE MYRTLE. 
It is not necessary to give all the evidence 
which exists, to prove that it became absolutely 
necessary that I should ride about fifty miles 
over a Western Prairie, alone; that is, alone in 
the woman’s sense of the term! I had neither 
companion nor protector! 
I had remained in one of those bustling towns 
far up on the banks of the Mississippi, till the 
ice had accumulated in the river so that boats 
could not run, and I must therefore depend 
upon a stage, or some private conveyance, till I 
reached the point at which the river was again 
open. 
For the first twelve miles I was indebted to 
the carriage of a friend, and met with no adven¬ 
tures. Then I was put on board the “ regu¬ 
lar post-coach,” and was the only passenger. 
There was no “ inside and outside,” and but two 
seats, one of which was occupied by the driver, 
who was a “Great Western,” a genuine son of 
the soil, and the other by my humble self. I felt 
indeed “ peculiarly situated,” and not at all in¬ 
clined to be merry; but my companion soon 
gave evidence of a decided inclination to be 
sociable, by beginning the following dialogue. 
“ Wal, I guess as how you aint married ?” 
“ Why, what makes you think so ?” 
“ Oh I don’now, there’s most allers generally 
somethin’ about the girls, so that I can tell 
whether er no they’re married.” 
“And I guess you are,” I said by way of 
reply. 
“No, oh no, I aint,” and there came over his 
brawny face, not a rosy, but a peony blush. 
“Why not, why don’t you get married?” 
“ Oh, when a man is married he has to settle 
right down in one place, can’t go no where nor 
see nothin’, and I want to see a little of the 
world. I was born in Ohio, and came out here 
’bout two years ago, and went to boating, and 
now I am driving team. Don’t know what I 
shall do next.” 
“Well,” said I, when you choose to “marry 
and settle down, you have only to ask some nice 
girl, and she will say yes, and the matter will 
be finished at once.” 
“Oh, but I aint so sure about hearin’ yes. 
Girls sometimes say no.” 
“ Do they ? well you have the advantage of 
us, in the privilege of asking—we have to wait 
to be asked, and if nobody asks us, of course we 
cannot say yes.” 
“But the asking; that’s the worst part, to kind 
o’like a girl, and pop the question, and heer her 
say no. I tell you it is about the hardest.” 
His ideas were very original, and he expressed 
them with great freedom, and served to diversify 
very pleasantly the sameness of a ride over some 
twelve miles of prairie road, which recent rain- 
ings and freezings had converted into such a 
Corduroy as no Green mountain wild ever wit¬ 
nessed. 
When his “ official term” was ended, he set 
me down at a little French tavern by the way- 
side, and it was three o’clock in the afternoon. 
I only asked for the privilege of taking a nap, 
for it seemed to me I must have been metamor¬ 
phosed into a jelly, and for the purpose of sleep¬ 
ing I was permitted to take my choice of half-a- 
dozen little rooms—kitchen, parlor, and bed¬ 
room—all looking as if they had no such ac¬ 
quaintances as chamber maids, till in despair of 
finding comfort and cleanliness, “ I laid me down 
to sleep” amidst fleas and various other quite 
as sociable companions, and slept ten minutes, 
when I was ai'oused by the bustling landlord, 
“ for the stage was ready.” 
“You are an English lady,” said he, “as he 
officiously conducted me on my way.”* 
“ Why, how came you to know,” said I, for I 
thought it would be a pity to spoil his conceit, 
by telling what all my readers have learned by 
greater discernment, that I came from the green¬ 
est part of*Yankec-land—how could you tell so 
quick. 
“Oh, I can always tell an English lady the 
moment I see her.” 
I suppose it was my embonpoint which de- 
cieved him, as I confess it has often led others 
into the same mistake, and is on a scale which 
American women generally, and modern gen¬ 
tility do not approve! 
Now I was on the way again, and not in any 
thing that could in Christian charity be called a 
stage. A New-England urchin would have 
called it a “go-cart.” I needed no canopy to 
shield me from the sun, for it was cloudy and 
very dark, but the wind was piercing cold, and 
I had for companions three boorish-looking men. 
Never before did I feel so much as if I were 
away out in Iowa! 
The sun soon went down, the moon and stars 
were invisible ; I could not see the river; there 
were no hills, all around was one dreary waste. 
With what affection my thoughts lingered 
among the dells and dingles of my native land— 
those forests, and those grand old hills. 
But during this ride I saw for the first time 
those mysterious mounds, the “Tumuli of the 
West.’-’ Little hillocks they seemed, long and 
narrow, and too regular to owe their existence 
to the freaks of nature. For two or three miles 
they were scattered along at little distances from 
each other, and my fancy was very busy in 
imagining their origin, and wandering concern¬ 
ing the strange people who moulded them. But 
fancy, however far it wondered, and however 
frequent its queries, could bring me back no 
answer. 
At nightfall we stopped “to water the horses” 
at a genuine log cabin of the prairie, and I ran in 
to take a peep. How true that one-half the 
world knows not how the other half lives. There 
were two rooms, with no other floor than the 
native earth; the logs of the roof and ceiling 
were just as nature made them; there was a 
bed in each of the three corners, and a stove in 
the fourth, upon which were roasting, and bak¬ 
ing, and boiling, goose and quail and Prairie 
chicken, with all the et ceteras of a luxurious 
repast. So much more do such people care for 
the palate, than for the comfort of any other 
portion of the body. 
Tame animals of the feathered tribe were “ at 
roost” over head, and all around hung the par¬ 
aphernalia of the bipeds and four-footed things 
who lodged “within and round about.” 
I had only time for a glance when “ all was 
ready,” and on we Went. The prairie fires were 
blazing at a distance in every direction, and 
more and more strange and desolate it seemed. 
But my companions proved very harmless, and 
did not address unto me a word during the whole 
way to K—-, where they deposited me upon the 
platform of a hotel in the midst of a multitude, 
I being the only woman. 
I was guided up stairs into the reception- 
room, in which were two beds and a lounge, a 
a bureau, a stove, and three rocking chairs, with 
various other conveniences. This room opened 
into a large hall “where men did seem to con¬ 
gregate.” A woman in this region is always a 
lion , and must expect to be treated like one. 
I was no sooner seated than the door opened, 
and in stalked a would-be gentleman, with his 
hands in his pockets and a cigar in his mouth. 
He walked back and forth very leisurely, view¬ 
ing me from top to toe, till he was satisfied, (I 
conclude,) and then walked out, to make room 
for another, who followed his example, as did 
five or six more. Thinking endurance no longer 
a virtue, I arose and asked for my room. 
To reach it, I was conducted through this 
same hall, the gentlemen forming a phalanx on 
each side for me to pass, and making the best 
use of their eyes they could in so short a time. 
Then up a pair of rickety stairs, through a bed¬ 
room, and finally, into my own. Dear me! 
weary and worn as I was, I despaired of finding 
rest in such a place. 
The room must have been proof against 
brooms and dusters, and the bed against water. 
There were lying about such articles as I had 
not been accustomed to seeing in ladies’ sleeping 
apartments! and which prompted me to be sure 
the door was secured against all possibility of 
ingress. 
Every moment the boat was expected on 
which I was to take passage for St. Louis, so I 
had no time to sleep, yet I could not keep 
awake. My nap was only a little season of hor¬ 
rible visions, by which I was not in the least 
refreshed, and seemed an age, but I found could 
only have been a few moments, when I was 
called, for the “boat was ready.” 
Upon opening my door, I found the floor of 
the adjoining room so thickly strewn with hu¬ 
man beings that I could with difficulty find my 
way, and when I landed in the great hall, lo! 
the multitude was still there, only having chang¬ 
ed a standing for a recumbent position, and up 
popped a hundred of these same black heads to 
stare at me again. I opened the first door 
which met my eye, and found myself in the 
dining-room; with a feeling of relief I seated 
myself in the nearest chair, thinking “I am cer¬ 
tainly safe here.” 
Soon I heard a coughing and sneezing that 
promised any thing but solitude, and started up 
to see “ what now!” My consternation was not 
diminished when I beheld on the floor behind 
the table, a row of cots, and fifty more black 
heads, and a hundred staring eyes. Alas, 
what should I do? not a woman to be seen or 
heard of. 
I opened a door to depart, and found it lead¬ 
ing up a dark, narrow staircase, which offered 
