What Norman Saw in the West

by Julia M. Olin

“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.