After crossing a prairie about a dozen miles in width, and taking breakfast with a farmer upon its edge, I continued my journey over the undulating plains until near the middle of the afternoon, when I reached my present stage. The whole region, as I journeyed through it, lay still and quiet: every farmhouse and log-cabin was deserted by its tenants, who had congregated to the nearest villages to celebrate the day; and, verily, not a little did my heart smite me at my own heedless desecration of the political Sabbath of our land. _Vandalia, Ill._ XX "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes--" _Childe Harold._ "The sun in all his broad career Ne'er looked upon a fairer land, Or brighter skies or sweeter scenes." Ever since the days of that king of vagabonds, the mighty Nimrod of sacred story, and, for aught to the contrary, as long before, there has existed a certain roving, tameless race of wights, whose chief delight has consisted in wandering up and down upon the face of the earth, with no definite object of pursuit, and with no motive of peregrination save a kind of restless, unsatisfied craving after change; in its results much like the migratory instinct of passage-birds, but, unlike that periodical instinct, incessant in exercise. Now, whether it so be that a tincture of this same vagrant, Bohemian spirit is coursing my veins under the name of "Yankee enterprise," or whether, in my wanderings through these wild, unsettled regions, I have imbibed a portion thereof, is not for me to decide. Nevertheless, sure it is, not unfrequently are its promptings detected as I journey through this beautiful land.