Armed with slate and pencil, and hid away in the summer-house, or locked in the library, I would write away until I came to a crack mid-way down the slate, and there I would always pause to read what I had written, and think what to say next. But I would soon be called to my neglected school books, and then would hastily rub out what I had written, lest others would learn of my secret project; yet the story would be re-written as soon as I could again steal away. But the crack in my slate was a bridge I never crossed with my book.
Ah! what is the work that has not its bridges of difficulties to cross? and how often we stop there and turning back, rub out all we have done?
"Rome was not built in a day," yet I, a child, thought to write a book in a day, when no one was looking. I have since learned that it takes lesson and lessons, read and re-read, and many too that are not learned from books, and then the book will be—only a little pamphlet after all.
THROUGH NEBRASKA.
CHAPTER I.
Going and Settling of the Nebraska Mutual Aid Colony of Bradford, Pa., in Northern Nebraska — A Description of the Country in which they located, which embraces the Elkhorn, Niobrara and Keya Paha Valleys — Their First Summer's Work and Harvest.
True loyalty, as well as true charity, begins at home. Then allow us to begin this with words of love of our own native land,—the state of all that proud Columbia holds within her fair arms the nearest and dearest to us; the land purchased from the dusky but rightful owners, then one vast forest, well filled with game, while the beautiful streams abounded with fish. But this rich hunting ground they gave up in a peaceful treaty with the noble Quaker, William Penn; in after years to become the "Keystone," and one of the richest states of all the Union.
Inexhaustible mineral wealth is stored away among her broad mountain ranges, while her valleys yield riches to the farmer in fields of golden grain. Indeed, the wealth in grain, lumber, coal, iron, and oil that are gathered from her bosom cannot be told—affording her children the best of living; but they have grown, multiplied, and gathered in until the old home can no longer hold them all; and some must needs go out from her sheltering arms of law, order, and love, and seek new homes in the "far west," to live much the same life our forefathers lived in the land where William Penn said: "I will found a free colony for all mankind."
Away in the northwestern part of the state, in McKean county, a pleasant country village was platted, a miniature Philadelphia, by Daniel Kingbury, in or about the year 1848. Lying between the east and west branches of the Tunagwant—or Big Cove—Creek, and hid away from the busy world by the rough, rugged hills that surround it, until in 1874, when oil was found in flowing wells among the hills, and in the valleys, and by 1878 the quiet little village of 500 inhabitants was transformed into a perfect beehive of 18,000 busy people, buying and selling oil and oil lands, drilling wells that flowed with wealth, until the owners scarce knew what to do with their money; and, forgetting it is a long lane that has no turning, and a deep sea that has no bottom, lived as though there was no bottom to their wells, in all the luxury the country could afford. And even to the laboring class money came so easily that drillers and pumpers could scarce be told from a member of the Standard Oil Company.