Here the travellers rested to greet old friends, who had preceded them, and to form plans for the future. They all agreed that a more beautiful nestling place for a village had rarely been seen; and really, considering it was little more than eight months old, it had quite a grown-up look. There were several neat houses, and many cabins, the appearance of which indicated industrious inmates, who would rapidly increase their comforts, and enlarge their borders. The bright river made a graceful curve, fringed with trees, which the skill of man could not have arranged so tastefully as nature had done. Hills rose to the horizon in gradually ascending series, their verdant slopes lighted up with golden sunshine. One of grander proportions than the others, called Blue Mound, was immediately singled out by Mr. Bradford as the site of a future Free State University; and his equally active-minded wife forthwith matured the plan, by proposing that William Bruce should be its first president, and her baby become a professor of some ’ology or other. “I am afraid we can’t wait long enough for _him_,” replied her husband, smiling. “We shall have to choose _you_ for a professor, Kate; I, for one, will give you my vote.” The rough hands of the settlers, and their coarse garments, soiled with prairie mud, were offensive to Kate’s ideas of neatness, and still more so to the delicate tastes of Alice. But on Sundays, when they were dressed, in their best, and met together to read and sing, they looked like quite different people. As they became more acquainted, it was an agreeable surprise to find so large a proportion of them intelligent and well educated. With a pervading character of sobriety, industry and enterprise, they seemed to require nothing but time, and a small allowance of that, to build up thriving towns and form a prosperous state. Certainly, the manner of living was rude, for many of them ate their dinner from boards laid across the tops of barrels. The labour also was hard, for there was much to do, and few to do it; and, as yet, wells were not dug, or machinery introduced. But where all worked, no one felt his dignity lessened by toil. They had the most essential element of a prosperous state; the respectability of labour. The next most important element they also had; for they placed a high value on education, and were willing to sacrifice much to secure it for their children. The absence of conventional forms, and the constant exercise of ingenuity, demanded by the inconveniences and emergencies of a settler’s life, have a wonderful effect in producing buoyancy and energy of character. The tendency to hope for every thing, and the will to do every thing desirable to be done, were so contagious, that Alice was surprised to discover the amount of her hitherto undeveloped capabilities.