Soon after I made the acquaintance of Judge Flandrau at Traverse de Sioux there was a young man visiting him from Washington. The judge took us both on our first prairie chicken hunt. We had no dog. On the upper prairie back of the town going along a road, we disturbed an old prairie hen that attempted to draw us away from her young. The Judge had admonished us that we must never kill on the ground, always on the wing, to be sportsmen. This hen scudded and skipped along a rod or two at a time. Finally, he said, "Fellows, I can't stand this, I must shoot that chicken, you won't tell if I do?" We pledged our word. He fired and missed. After we got home, we told everybody for we said we had only promised not to tell if he shot it. We never enjoyed this joke half as much as he did. We always joked him about making tatting.
Flandrau, dearest of men, true as steel, decided in character, but forgiving in heart, a warm friend—was one of the greatest men our state has ever known. He was a tall, dark man, and very active. He had often told me how he and Garvie, clerk for the Indian Trader at Traverse de Sioux used to walk the seventy-five miles to St. Paul in two days. He once walked 150 miles in three days to the land office at Winona.
In 1858 I built my own home in St. Peter and made my garden. The year before I had gone into a clump of plums when they were fruiting and tied white rags to the best. I had moved them into my garden and they were doing fine. One day I took off my vest as I was working and hung it on one of these trees. Suddenly my attention was attracted to the sky and I never saw a more beautiful sight. A horde of grasshoppers were gently alighting. Nothing more beautiful than the shimmering of the sun on their thousands of gold-bronze wings could be imagined. They took everything and then passed on leaving gardens looking as if they had been burned. When I went for that vest, they had eaten it all but the seams. It was the funniest sight—just a skeleton. Not a smitch of white rags left on the trees, either.
We people who lived in Minnesota thought there was only one kind of wild grape. A man by the name of Seeger who had been in Russia and was connected with a wine house in Moscow came to St. Peter. In the Minnesota valley were immense wild grape vines covering the tallest trees. Here he found five distinct varieties of grapes and said one kind would make a fine red wine—Burgundy. He told me how to make this wine from grapes growing wild on my own farm. I made about ten gallons. When it was a year old it was very heady.
Edward Eggleston belonged to a debating society in St. Peter and was on the successful side in a debate, "Has Love a Language not Articulate." He was a Methodist preacher here, but later had charge of a Congregational church in Brooklyn, N. Y. He said when the Methodists abolished itinerancy and mission work, he thought the most useful part of the church was gone.
In my boyhood days at home, a little boy in the neighborhood had the misfortune to drink some lye. Fortunately the doctor was near and using a stomach pump saved his life for the time being. However, the child's stomach could retain nothing. In a short time he was a skeleton indeed. One day his father who carried him around constantly, happened to be by the cow when she was being milked. The child asked for some milk and was given it directly from the cow. Great was the father's astonishment when the little lad retained it. Milk given him two minutes after milking was at once ejected. The father had a pen made just outside his son's bedroom window and the cow kept there, and here many times a day the cow was milked and the milk instantly given. After several months the child was restored to health.
One night in Minnesota just as I was going to sit down to supper my wife told me that a man who had just passed told her that a child that lived ten miles back in the country had drank lye some days before and was expected to die, as he could retain nothing. Without waiting to eat my supper I jumped on a horse and made the trip there in record speed. This child followed the same formula and was saved.
It was easy for youngsters to get at lye for every house had a leach for the making of soap. This lye was made by letting water drip over hard wood ashes in a barrel. A cupful would be taken out and its strength tried. If it would hold up an egg it was prime for soap. It was clear as tea, if it was left in a cup it was easily mistaken for it.
During the days when New Ulm was expecting a second Indian attack and the town was full of refugees, I was ordered to destroy some buildings on the outskirts. I started with a hotel and opened all the straw ticks that had been used for refugees beds and threw the contents all around. I believed all the people had left but thought I would go in every room and make sure of this. In one room I heard a queer noise and going to the bed found a small baby that had been tomahawked. Its little head was dented in two places. I took it with me and went out. Its grandmother who owned the place came running frantically and took it from me. Its father and mother had been killed and it had been brought in by the refugees. In the hasty departure it had been overlooked, each one supposing the other had taken it.
On the 25th day of August after the massacre of the 22nd, around New Ulm and in that vicinity, a little boy who had saved himself from the Indians by secreting himself in the grass of the swamps, came into New Ulm and said there were twelve people alive and a number of bodies to be buried sixteen miles from New Ulm. He said he had seen a man who was driving a horse and wagon, shot and scalped, but could not tell what had become of the woman and baby that were riding with him. The troops marched to the place, having the boy as a guide, buried a number of bodies and brought the twelve survivors to New Ulm. They could find no trace of the woman and baby, although the father's body was found and buried.