At least there are several things which happened before I was six years old that are as vivid in my memory as if they had happened but yesterday. Such was the coming of the grasshoppers in 1874, when I was two years old. My father, Judge Boyle, then owned the block on the north side of Fifth street between I and J streets, in the village of Fairbury. Our house stood where J. A. Westling's house now stands. Near our place passed the stage road to Beatrice. A common remark then was, "We are almost to Fairbury, there is Boyle's house." Father always had a big garden of sweet corn, tomatoes, cabbage, etc., and that year it was especially fine. One day he came rushing home from his office saying, "The grasshoppers are coming." Mother and he hurried to the garden to save all the vegetables possible before the grasshoppers arrived. I put on a little pink sunbonnet of which I was very proud, and went out to watch my parents gather the garden truck as fast as they could and run to the cellar door and toss it down. I jumped up and down thoroughly enjoying the excitement. Finally, the grasshoppers, which were coming from the northwest like a dark cloud, seeming so close, father shut the cellar door before he and mother returned to the garden for another load. They had just filled their arms when the grasshoppers began to drop and not wishing to let any down cellar they threw what vegetables they had on the ground and turned a big wooden wash tub over them. By this time my little pink sunbonnet was covered with big grasshoppers. Mother picked me up in her arms and we hurried into the house. From the north kitchen window we watched every stalk of that garden disappear, even the onions were eaten from the ground. When father went to get the vegetables from under the wooden tub there wasn't a thing there. The grasshoppers had managed to crawl and dig their way under the edge of that tub.