What Norman Saw in the West

by Julia M. Olin

On their return they stood beneath a railroad bridge, and saw two long freight trains pass over it. They passed a rural town that had recently sprung up in an “oak opening,” and arrived at home with flowers and pleasant remembrances of their four-mile walk on the prairies.

Norman’s quiet pleasures by his uncle’s side, his reading and sketching, soon gave place to more active out-of-door amusements. He formed a friendship with two boys who lived in the neighborhood, who were so well-trained, that his uncle readily consented to his intimacy with them.

“Even a child is known by his doings;” and it is well when a boy has already formed a character which inspires confidence, and allows parents and friends safely to trust in him. Such a lad will probably retain in manhood the respect and confidence he has won in boyhood.

Norman went every evening with Alfred and Herbert Walduf to bathe in the Rock river, and sometimes he went with them to fish, or walked with them in the woods.

These boys were regular attendants at the Sunday school of which Mr. Laurence, Aunt Ellen’s brother, was superintendent, and they asked Norman to go with them to school. How earnestly the children listened when their superintendent told them of the sad fate of four of their number who had recently joined with them in their hymns of praise. They had removed a short time before with their parents to a town not far distant, where their father had received a call to preach. A letter had been received from their mother, describing the situation of their new home, by the side of a little stream, and saying that she thought she had found a pleasant resting-place.

Father, mother, and eight children were all gathered together one peaceful Sabbath; the two elder sons having come home from their places of business to spend a few days with their family. Kind and affectionate words were spoken—a thankful retrospect of the past, and hopeful glancings to the future.

The next day the little stream began to rise and swell, and the children greatly enjoyed the transformation of their quiet brook into the rushing torrent. Enjoyment, however, gave place to alarm as the waters rose higher and higher, till they reached the house.

Some men from the village came down and advised them to seek a more secure shelter. On measuring the waters, however, they found that they had fallen four inches; and the father, thinking that the worst was over, concluded that they had better remain in the house. The men, gathering up some clothes that had been left out to dry, handed them to the inmates of the house, and left them.

There were anxious hearts in that lonely dwelling that night, as they listened to the rushing waters without. The baby wakened, and the elder brother, to amuse and quiet the little thing, gave it his watch to play with. Suddenly there was a crash, and the house was loosened from its foundations. There was a cry heard from the wife and mother, and then all other sounds were lost in the roar of the waters. Stunned, half unconscious, the father felt himself borne onward by the rushing flood. As the stream carried him past an overhanging tree, he caught hold of its branches, and there he hung till the morning light brought help and rescue. He was a childless man; the loving faces of wife and children he was to see no more till the morning of the resurrection. Four of the bodies were found the next morning beneath the ruins of the house. The infant’s hand clasped the watch, still ticking, while its own pulse was stopped forever. The waters of the stream, swelled by the great freshet, had been obstructed by a culvert on the railway till it gave way, and the accumulated mass of waters had swept on with resistless impetuosity, working ruin and death.

And then Mr. Laurence enforced the lesson so often taught, so soon forgotten, of so living that when the cry is heard, “Behold the bridegroom cometh!” whether at midnight or in the morning, we may go forth with joy to meet him.