"Oh, Lawd, Missus, I follows my two boys and the old woman; and then, 'pears like I wants a taste of votin’ before I dies, an’ the ole man done wants no swamps to wade in afore he votes, ’kase he must be Republican, ye see!" "Well, Aunty, give us the sympathetic side of the story, or tell us what you think of leaving your old home." "I done have no home, nohow, if they shoots my ole man an’ the boys, an’ gives me no money for de washing." A bright woman of twenty-five years of age was asked her condition, when she answered, "I hadn’t much real trouble yet, like some of my neighbors who lost everything. We had a lot, an’ a little house, an’ some stock on the place. We sold all out, ’kase we didn’t dare to stay when votin’ time came again. Some neighbors better off than we had been all broken up by a pack of night-riders, all in white, who scared everybody to death, ran the men off the swamps before elections, ran the stock off, an’ set fire to their places. A poor woman might as well be killed, and done with it." Whoever read anything more pathetic than the above? Who can wonder any longer that a regular panic seized upon the people in certain sections on the South to go forth unto a land they knew not, where they could live in peace and safety among a better race of men? The number of persecuted pilgrims, those seeking a home in Kansas, is variously given at between forty and sixty thousand men, women and children. When the army of the Israelites left Egypt, they were well supplied, for they had been instructed to ask of the Egyptians anything they wanted; but these 40,000 or 60,000 people departed in most cases with absolutely nothing but the clothes they stood in, and they were often poorly clad, often hungry and exhausted, and in need of all things. Some, indeed, had teams of oxen that brought on all their earthly possessions, dragging their weary length along day after day, and week after week, and straining their longing eyes towards the fields of Kansas and liberty. Some of these pilgrims that came no further than from Texas were actually nine weeks on the road! Poor, dear creatures! How sweet to them must have been the hopes and anticipations of a peaceful home, when they were willing to make such tremendous sacrifices that they might cross over into the fair and fertile fields of Kansas! "Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood stood dressed in living green; so to the Jews old Canaan stood, while Jordan rolled between."