"I've meant to tell you, a half dozen times, about that little Yankee gal that used to be at Red Wing; but I've been half afraid to, for fear you would get mad about it. My wife said that when she came away there was a heap of talk about you being sorter 'sweet' on the 'nigger-school-marm.' I knew that she was sick at your house when I was there, and so, putting the two together, I 'llowed that for once there might be some truth in a Horsford rumor. I reckon it must have been a lie, though; or else she 'kicked' you, which she wouldn't stand a speck about doing, even if you were the President, if you didn't come up to her notion. It's a mighty high notion, too, let me tell you; and the man that gits up to it'll have to climb. Bet your life on that!
"But that's all no matter. I reckon you'll be glad to know how she's gettin' on out here, anyhow. She come here not a great while after I did; but, bless your stars, she wasn't as green as I, not by any manner of means. She didn't want to hide out in a quiet part of the country, where the world didn't turn around but once in two days. No, sir! She was keen—just as keen as a razor-blade. She run her eye over the map and got inside the railroad projects somehow, blessed if I know how; and then she just went off fifty miles out of the track others was taking, and bought up all the land she could pay for, and got trusted for all the credit that that brought her; and here she is now, with Eupolia building right up on her land, and just a-busting up her quarter-sections into city lots, day after day, till you can't rest.
"Just think on't, Moyne! It's only three years ago and she was teaching a nigger school, there in Red Wing; and now, God bless you, here she is, just a queen in a city that wasn't nowhere then. I tell you, she's a team! Just as proud as Lucifer, and as wide-awake as a hornet in July. She beats anything I ever did see. She's given away enough to make two or three, and I'll be hanged if it don't seem to me that every cent she gives just brings her in a dollar. The people here just worship her, as they have a good right to; but she ain't a bit stuck up. She's got a whole lot of them Red Wing niggers here, and has settled them down and put them to work, and made them get on past all expectation. She just tells right out about her having taught a nigger school down in Horsford, and nobody seems to think a word on't. In fact, I b'lieve they rather like her better for it.
"I heard about her soon after she came here, but, to tell the truth, I thought I was a little better than a 'nigger-teacher,' if I was in Kansas. So I didn't mind anything about her till Eupolia began to grow, and I came to think about going into trading again. Then I came over, just to look around, you know. I went to see the little lady, feeling mighty 'shamed, you may bet, and more than half of the notion that she wouldn't care about owning that she'd ever seen me before. But, Lord love you! I needn't have had any fear about that. Nobody ever had a heartier welcome than she gave me, until she found that I had been living only fifty miles away for a year and hadn't let her know. Then she come down on me—Whew! I thought there was going to be a blizzard, sure enough.
"'Jordan Jackson,' said she, 'you just go home and bring that wife and them children here, where they can see something and have a rest.'
"I had to do it, and they just took to staying in Eupolia here nigh about all the time. So I thought I might as well come too; and here I am, doing right well, and would be mighty glad to see an old friend if you could make up your mind to come this way. We are all well, and remember you as the kindest of all old friends in our time of need.
"I never wrote as long a letter as this before, and never 'llow to do it again.
"Your true friend,