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Louis, rushed together for warmth, and became piled in a great heap. Those inside smothered and those outside froze, and the ghastly pyramid remained there on the prairie for weeks: the drovers barely escaped with their lives. The pioneer period of Illinois was ending as Thomas Lincoln and his tall boy drove their ox-team over the Indiana line. The population of the State had grown to 157,447.
To the construction of this house all the town contributed, as also to the building of the meeting-house; some gave work; some, the use of a horse or ox-team; some, boards; some, stones or brick; some, logs; others, nails; and a few, a very few, money. At the house-raising a good dinner was provided, and of course, plenty of liquor.
The colony has a real friend in H. J. Gosse, who is certainly an exponent of joy, giving optimism to the lonely wanderer who may find himself domiciled under the roof of the Riverside Hotel where the splendid personality of this old pioneer reigns supreme. Mr. Gosse's parents crossed the plains with an ox-team from New Orleans to California way back in '49.
"We could let you have our ox-team to do that breaking with," she said. "You've had Sproatly living with you all winter. Why don't you make him stay and work out his keep?" Hawtrey laughed. "Sally," he said, "do you think anybody could make Sproatly work?" "It would be hard," the girl admitted, and then looked up at him with a little glint in her eyes.
On the 15th day of November, 1835, a company consisting of six men started from Milwaukee with an ox-team and wagon, the latter containing provisions, tools, etc., for the Rock River Valley. On the 18th they arrived where Janesville now stands, and immediately proceeded to build a log cabin opposite of what is called the "Big Rock." This was the first settlement in Rock River Valley.
The ox team was chosen as a typical reminder of pioneer days. The Oregon Trail, it must be remembered, is essentially an ox-team trail. No more effective instrument, therefore, could have been chosen to attract attention, arouse enthusiasm, and secure aid in forwarding the work, than this living symbol of the old days. Indeed, too much attention, in one sense, was attracted.
I had that desire myself when I was a boy of about fifteen, but my father succeeded in making me change my opinion on the subject, and without much argument, unless you can call an ox-team and a stony pasture an argument. I had been asking to stay at home from school for a long time. I said that I was too old to be sitting there with a lot of girls and some younger boys, and that I wanted to work.
Meantime the heroic proprietor of the peaceful ox-team, whose valor Incarnacion had so infelicitously celebrated, was walking listlessly in the dust beside his wagon. At a first glance his slouching figure, taken in connection with his bucolic conveyance, did not immediately suggest a hero.
The ox-team is a dense and crude form of potency, and the electric motor is the more ethereal and intense form of energy. Now the progress of humanity is unfailingly registered by its advance into the employment of the ethereal forces and the more intense energies, as these form conditions that react upon life.
"It's dreadful close here, I'm 'most smothered," Nurse Byloe said; and, putting her hand to her throat, unclasped the catch of the necklace of gold beads she had worn since she was a baby, a bead having been added from time to time as she thickened. It lay in a deep groove of her large neck, and had not troubled her in breathing before, since the day when her husband was run over by an ox-team.
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