ON THE ROCK RIVER.
“These are the gardens of the desert; these,
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name,
The prairies.... Lo! they stretch
In airy undulations far away,
As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,
Stood still, with all his rounded billows, fix’d
And motionless forever.”—BRYANT.
A railway ride over the beautiful prairies took Norman and his mother to
their place of destination. How soft and gentle were those prairie
swells, looking like English park scenery, relieved as is the vast
expanse of meadow by scattered groves of trees. The fine unbroken
horizon line tells you that you do not see a greater extent of country,
only because your eye has no greater capabilities; that onward, and all
around, the vast prairie lies in its verdure and beauty; that there, as
here, the flowers are springing; that you may travel north, south, east,
and west, hundreds of miles, and still that undulating prairie, in its
“encircling vastness,” will lie around you like the sea.
At the station Norman found his uncle looking out anxiously for him, and
he was soon pressed tenderly in his arms.
“Well, my boy,” said his uncle, “I feared we should be disappointed
again to-day. How glad I am to see you once more, though you have so
grown I would not have known you.”
“How is Aunt Ellen?” asked Norman.
“Very well, she is waiting anxiously for you at home; she has been
counting the days since you wrote you were coming.”
“How well I remember,” said Norman, “when I was a little boy, how she
let me whittle in her room, and how she brought me bread and butter with
white sugar on it.”
“That bread and butter and sugar made a deep impression on his mind,”
said Mrs. Lester; “he has always connected the thought of it with his
Aunt Ellen.”
“And there is your Aunt Ellen at the gate looking for you,” said his
uncle.
Norman loved his uncle and aunt very much, and was very glad to be with
them once more. He loved to sit by his uncle’s side and read to him, and
tell him about his school, and about his cottage home, and about his
little cousins, Bessie and Edith, with whom he spent so many pleasant
summer days, rambling about the woods and among the rocks.
His uncle was an invalid, obliged continually to recline on his couch,
but he was always cheerful, always happy. A sister said of him, that if
you put him on the top of a rock he would be happy; and the secret of
this was, that his heart was filled with love to God, and that he had
constant communion with his blessed Saviour. The peace of God lay upon
his countenance; he had no troubled or vexing thoughts.
He loved to read and hear about the progress of Christ’s kingdom, and
about what good men are doing to bring about the fulfillment of that
prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Norman was very busy for several days, copying his sketches of Niagara,
and doing them in pastil, and his uncle took great interest in the
progress of his work.
One day they went with a clergyman, Aunt Ellen’s brother, to a seminary,
built on a commanding eminence above the town. After seeing the scholars
do their sums very rapidly on the black-board, they went to the upper
story of the building, and looked upon an extensive view. To the north
the rapid river, with its high banks and wooded islands; to the east,
the prairie, stretching out far in the distance. The spires and
buildings of the town toward the south, with the fine arches of the
railing embankments, while the river, whose falls filled the air with
sound, was spanned with the noble arches of the railroad bridge, and the
broken ones of several ruined bridges, swept away by the recent floods.
After leaving the seminary they wandered in the oak grove that adorns
the bluff upon which it stands, and looked down on the ravine which
bounds the grounds to the north.
“Now, mother,” said Norman, one morning after breakfast, “for a walk on
the prairies.”
“I am ready,” replied Mrs. Lester; “it is a cool, gray morning; just the
day for such a ramble.”
On and on they wandered; Norman running to and fro, as the brilliant
tint of some flower caught his eye, made his mother the bearer of all
his floral treasures. A fine bouquet he had after a while, yellow
lupins, the blue spiderwort, the purple phlox, an orange flower very
much like the wallflower, and the painted cup, made classic by Bryant’s
verse:
“Scarlet tufts
Are glowing in the green, like flakes of fire;
The wanderers of the prairies know them well,
And call that brilliant flower, the Painted Cup.”
They first walked toward the south, where they could have glimpses of
the river; but at length they directed their course to the east, to an
octagon house, that stood like a light-house on a hill. Crossing the
railroad, they paused a while to see the gravel-train get its load of
sand from the banks.
“There,” said Norman, as the locomotive gave a snort or two, as if in
impatience at the pause; “there stands the grand old fellow to be looked
at, as Mr. Beecher says.”
A far-reaching view of the undulating prairie, heightened at intervals
by flashes of the river gliding among the fertile meadows, repaid them
for the ascent to the octagon house.
On their return they stood beneath a railroad bridge, and saw two long
freight trains pass over it. They passed a rural town that had recently
sprung up in an “oak opening,” and arrived at home with flowers and
pleasant remembrances of their four-mile walk on the prairies.
Norman’s quiet pleasures by his uncle’s side, his reading and sketching,
soon gave place to more active out-of-door amusements. He formed a
friendship with two boys who lived in the neighborhood, who were so
well-trained, that his uncle readily consented to his intimacy with
them.
“Even a child is known by his doings;” and it is well when a boy has
already formed a character which inspires confidence, and allows parents
and friends safely to trust in him. Such a lad will probably retain in
manhood the respect and confidence he has won in boyhood.
Norman went every evening with Alfred and Herbert Walduf to bathe in the
Rock river, and sometimes he went with them to fish, or walked with them
in the woods.
These boys were regular attendants at the Sunday school of which Mr.
Laurence, Aunt Ellen’s brother, was superintendent, and they asked
Norman to go with them to school. How earnestly the children listened
when their superintendent told them of the sad fate of four of their
number who had recently joined with them in their hymns of praise. They
had removed a short time before with their parents to a town not far
distant, where their father had received a call to preach. A letter had
been received from their mother, describing the situation of their new
home, by the side of a little stream, and saying that she thought she
had found a pleasant resting-place.
Father, mother, and eight children were all gathered together one
peaceful Sabbath; the two elder sons having come home from their places
of business to spend a few days with their family. Kind and affectionate
words were spoken—a thankful retrospect of the past, and hopeful
glancings to the future.
The next day the little stream began to rise and swell, and the children
greatly enjoyed the transformation of their quiet brook into the rushing
torrent. Enjoyment, however, gave place to alarm as the waters rose
higher and higher, till they reached the house.
Some men from the village came down and advised them to seek a more
secure shelter. On measuring the waters, however, they found that they
had fallen four inches; and the father, thinking that the worst was
over, concluded that they had better remain in the house. The men,
gathering up some clothes that had been left out to dry, handed them to
the inmates of the house, and left them.
There were anxious hearts in that lonely dwelling that night, as they
listened to the rushing waters without. The baby wakened, and the elder
brother, to amuse and quiet the little thing, gave it his watch to play
with. Suddenly there was a crash, and the house was loosened from its
foundations. There was a cry heard from the wife and mother, and then
all other sounds were lost in the roar of the waters. Stunned, half
unconscious, the father felt himself borne onward by the rushing flood.
As the stream carried him past an overhanging tree, he caught hold of
its branches, and there he hung till the morning light brought help and
rescue. He was a childless man; the loving faces of wife and children he
was to see no more till the morning of the resurrection. Four of the
bodies were found the next morning beneath the ruins of the house. The
infant’s hand clasped the watch, still ticking, while its own pulse was
stopped forever. The waters of the stream, swelled by the great freshet,
had been obstructed by a culvert on the railway till it gave way, and
the accumulated mass of waters had swept on with resistless impetuosity,
working ruin and death.
And then Mr. Laurence enforced the lesson so often taught, so soon
forgotten, of so living that when the cry is heard, “Behold the
bridegroom cometh!” whether at midnight or in the morning, we may go
forth with joy to meet him.