Original settlers of the border-lands had little time and less opportunity for the observation of the beautiful in art or nature. Their lives were spent in toil, which blunted many of the finer sensibilities of a more leisurely existence. The hardy huntsman who spent his only hours of relaxation in chasing the wild game, and the weary mother who scarcely ever left her wheel or loom and shuttle by the light of day, except to bake her brain before a great open fire while preparing food, or to nurse to sleep the future lawmakers of a coming world-round republic, were alike too busy to ponder deeply the far-reaching possibilities of the lives they led. Such men of renown as Lincoln, Douglas, Baker, Grant, Logan, and Oglesby were evolved from environments similar to these, as were also the numerous adventurous borderers not known to fame (many of whom are yet living) who crossed the continent with ox teams, and whose patient and enduring wives nursed the future statesmen of a coming West in fear and trembling, as they protected their camps from the depredations of the wily Indian or the frenzy of the desert’s storms. Rail-making in the middle West was long a diversion and an art. The destruction of the hardwood timber, which if spared till to-day would be almost priceless, could not have been prevented, even if this commercial fact had been foreseen. The urgent need of fuel, shelter, bridges, public buildings, and fences allowed no consideration for future values to intervene and save the trees. In times of a temporary lull in a season’s activities, when, for a wonder, there were days together that the stroke of the woodman’s ax was not heard and the music of the cross-cut saw had ceased, the settler would take advantage of the interim to draw a bead with unerring aim upon the eye of a squirrel in a treetop, or bring down a wild turkey from its covert in the lower branches; or, if favored by a fall of virgin snow, it would be his delight to track the wild deer, and drag it home as a trophy of his marksmanship,—an earnest of the feast in which all his neighbors were invited to partake.