MAYBE the reader would like to know how the pioneers made the chimneys to their cabins. They would build up with split logs to the arch, and rive out sticks about one and one-half inches thick and two inches wide; they would make mortar of clay and mix in some grass to hold it together; they would make a scaffold and throw the mortar on that scaffold, and one boy or man would stand there and roll that stiff mud into what was called “cats”; those “cats” were about three inches thick and eight inches long. The builder stayed up in the inside of the chimney, they would pitch the “cats” and the sticks up to him, he would put on a round of the “cats”, then a round of the sticks, then pound the sticks down with a hand maul so that the mud was about one and one-half inches thick on both sides of the sticks; and that was a safe chimney for twenty years.
[Where Things Grow.]
THE Author of this little book feels proud of being a native-born citizen of one of the central counties of the best State in the best Government under the sun. Illinois is where things grow; the corn, the wheat, the hay, the oats, the fruit, the vegetables, the horses, the cattle, the hogs; the eggs don’t grow on bushes in Illinois, but they come as near to it as they do in any other State. And not only these things, which have been mentioned, grow in Illinois, but brains grow in Illinois too; and if they are about to be bothered to find a man who is smart enough for President, tell them not to be uneasy, that Illinois can furnish five hundred, if that many were needed. Yes, Illinois is where things grow.