and finds no need to assert his equality by rudeness.  He is delighted to see you, and bids you sit down on his battered bench without dreaming of any such apology as an English cottier offers to a Lady Bountiful when she calls.  He has worked out his independence, and shows it in every easy movement of his body.  He tells you of it unconsciously in every tone of his voice.  You will always find in his cabin some newspaper, some book, some token of advance in education.  When he questions you about the old country he astonishes you by the extent of his knowledge.  I defy you not to feel that he is superior to the race from whence he has sprung in England or in Ireland.  To me I confess that the manliness of such a man is very charming.  He is dirty, and, perhaps, squalid.  His children are sick and he is without comforts.  His wife is pale, and you think you see shortness of life written in the faces of all the family.  But over and above it all there is an independence which sits gracefully on their shoulders, and teaches you at the first glance that the man has a right to assume himself to be your equal.  It is for this position that the laborer works, bearing hard words and the indignity of tyranny; suffering also too often the dishonest ill usage which his superior power enables the master to inflict.

“I have lived very rough,” I heard a poor woman say, whose husband had ill used and deserted her.  “I have known what it is to be hungry and cold, and to work hard till my bones have ached.  I only wish that I might have the same chance again.  If I could have ten acres cleared two miles away from any living being, I could be happy with my children.  I find a kind of comfort when I am at work from daybreak to sundown, and know that it is all my own.”  I believe that life in the backwoods has an allurement to those who have been used to it that dwellers in cities can hardly comprehend.

From Milwaukee we went across Wisconsin, and reached the Mississippi at La Crosse.  From hence, according to agreement, we were to start by steamer at once up the river.  But we were delayed again, as had happened to us before on Lake Michigan at Grand Haven.

CHAPTER X.

THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.

It had been promised to us that we should start from La Crosse by the river steamer immediately on our arrival there; but, on reaching La Crosse, we found that the vessel destined to take us up the river had not yet come down.  She was bringing a regiment from Minnesota, and, under such circumstances, some pardon might be extended to irregularities.  This plea was made by one of the boat clerks in a very humble tone, and was fully accepted by us.  The wonder was that, at such a period, all means of public conveyance were not put absolutely out of gear.  One might surmise that when regiments were constantly being moved for the purposes of civil war—­when the whole North had but the one