KANSAS HOMES. 
59 
I gave up my own room to my friends, and, hastily taking some 
buffalo robes from the wood-pile, made a bed of them, and of 
comforters upon the floor in E.’s room. Having been a little 
time asleep was awakened by a quick stinging pain in my hand, 
and the consequent thought of a rattlesnake. The dampness 
about the windows had ruined the matches which lay near, and I 
could strike no light from any of them. To aid me, however, it 
still occasionally lightened faintly, and I felt secure in walking- 
over as much of the floor as would be revealed in the light; and 
slowly, every inch of the staircase being thus scrutinized that I 
might not step on any snake, if snake it was, I reached the dining¬ 
room and struck a light. Then I carefully shook every article 
composing my bed, hunted behind trunks and in every corner, 
and found nothing, though the pain in my hand continued the 
same. Just as I was preparing to blow out my light again, one 
of the girls, looking over the foot of the bedstead, says, “ What are 
you doing?” and was much amused at my reply, “ I am hunt¬ 
ing rattlesnakes! ” 
The pain in my hand was probably the effect of imagination, as 
we had been speaking of rattlesnakes the day before —of several 
houses where they had been found coiled up among the logs, and 
of one which very unceremoniously had crawled in between two 
persons occupying a bed in a tent. 
We went to the Sabbath school in the country with Mr. S. Near 
the close of the exercises the young man, TL, who made the brutal at¬ 
tack upon Mr. S., a few days before, came in with four or five young- 
men. If their faces were any index to their character, they were 
fitting companions for him. They seated themselves quietly, and 
offered no violence. If they came with such intentions, the circum¬ 
stances, or it is not impossible that the good in them for the time 
outweighed the evil, brutal nature, and prevented their execution. 
Towards evening we heard that Mr. Nute, the clergyman sent 
out by the Unitarian Association, would preach upon Capitol Hill, 
and we saw the people already gathering. The scene was im¬ 
pressive. The preacher stood while the audience sat upon rough 
seats and stones upon the summit of the hill. Earth had never 
spread out a fairer picture than this lying before us. At one 
