Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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“William,” she said one day to my father, “we might as well have remained in Tennessee and taken our chances on being killed by guerillas as to come all the way out to this God-for-saken country only to be burned to death by prairie fires, or shaken to pieces by earthquakes, or frightened to death by Indians.” And I am sure that if the Kansas cyclone had then enjoyed the widespread reputation that it does in this year of grace, my mother would have included that also.

In Tennessee, my father was a shoemaker and tanner by trade. And, by the grace of a kind Providence—and some quick shooting—he was a live Union “sympathizer” in a Rebel stronghold. The great conflict—the Civil War—between the North and the South was then on. My father had not, at this time, joined the fighting forces on either side. He was content to ply his trade, make leather and shoes, both of which were very much needed at the time. But my father made the almost fatal mistake of “exercising his rights as a free-born citizen,” in having his say.