Alice sighed, and wished she was more like Kate; for then she would not be such a weight upon his spirits. But he declared that he would not for the world have her in any way different from her own dear self. Then they fell to talking about their future home, which was now in readiness. Two of William’s brothers had arrived with their families. An addition to the cabin had been built for one of them, and the other would live within call. Katie was loth to part from her cousin; but she said they would be far more comfortable in their new quarters, and as for safety, there was safety nowhere; least of all, in Lawrence. Gradually they fell into a more cheerful strain of conversation. The husbands spoke hopefully, and really felt so; for they had strong faith that their beautiful Kansas would become a free and prosperous state. Various boxes from Massachusetts, directed to William Bruce, had arrived in Kansas City. Some of them contained comfortables and blankets for the winter, which Mrs. May had prepared for her darling daughter; her “stray lamb in the wilderness,” as she was wont to call her. Could all that mother’s thoughts and feelings have been daguerreotyped on the cloth, while those stitches were taken, it would have been an epic poem of wondrous pathos. What visions of Alice sleeping in her cradle; of her wakening smile; of her soft curls waving in the summer breeze, as she came running with a flower; of her girlish bloom, delicate as the sweet-pea blossom; of her clear melodious voice in the choir at church; of the bashful blushing ways, that betrayed her dawning love for William; of the struggle in her soul, when she must choose between him and her parents; of her parting look, when she turned from the home of her childhood, to follow her husband into the wilderness. In Alice’s soul those stitches, by the old, fond, faithful hand, would also waken a poem of reminiscences. How she longed for those boxes, to see what mother had sent her! Above all, for the letters from dear New England; especially the long letter from mother! It was agreed that William’s brothers should go with a wagon to bring them. They reached Kansas city in safety, and the boxes were delivered to them. Passing through Franklin, on their return, they found fifty or sixty Missouri ruffians carousing round a rum-shop, built of logs. A man with ragged trowsers and dirty checked shirt, too tipsy to stand alone, was leaning against a corner of the shop, scraping a fiddle, while his comrades sung: “We’ve camped in the wilderness, For a few days, for a few days; And then we’re going home, We’ve a right up yonder. We’ll vote, and shoot the Yankees, For a few days, for a few days; And then we’re going home, We’ve a right up yonder.”