FROM CHAPTER II, pp. 37-38.
Such was Neoshone, as the Indians who frequently camped there called it when the first white man stood on the bank of the river and watched the rushing waters flow swiftly by. They had borne the red man in his canoe, and around this very spot the Winnebago hunter had secured fine strings of ducks, and for generations had trapped for mink and gathered in abundance the fish that swarmed in every eddy and pool.
The hill at the north was crowned with a beautiful grove of young oak trees, and, standing on its slope, the early pioneer beheld before his eyes a magnificent panorama. In the distance the everlasting hills seemed to stand guard round and about it as did the walls of the Jewish capitol encircle its sacred precincts.
Valley, hillside, prairie, and plain, stretched away from the spectator's feet in varying lines and curves, while down the center rolled the grand old river. It seemed like a second Canaan, waiting for the coming of the chosen people, its soil ready to be waked by the share of the settler's plow, when crops would come forth as if touched by the magician's wand.
From
"ON GROWING OLD."
By NEAL BROWN.
Read before the Phantom Club, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin,
April 15, 1913.
... Growing old has many stages. You can remember the time when, in reading your favorite author, you were disgusted to find that he had made his hero forty years old, and you wondered how he could be guilty of imputing romance to such an unconscionable age. By and by, even though you found forty years to be the old age of youth, you were solaced by the thought that it was the youth of old age, and still later you will wonder where youth ends and old age begins.
In many assemblages you once found yourself the youngest man, or among the youngest. But with swift-flying years, you finally found yourself equal in age to most of those in all assemblies; but the time comes when only younger men are crowding around you. And when you try to evade the thought that you are growing old, along comes some kindly friend with the greeting, "How young you are looking."
You grow to regard as babes, wild, young blades of forty or fifty. You may comfort yourself with the thought expressed by Holmes. He says that he could feel fairly immune from death as long as older men whom he knew, still remained, especially if they were of a much greater age than himself. They were farther out on the skirmish line, and must be taken first.