Another typical illustration is supplied by a man whose home we visited in the winter. His comfortable farm-house was overflowing with the good things of life: a piano and an organ stood in the parlor, and a well-filled bookcase in the sitting-room; a large bay-window was bright with flowering plants; and base-burner coal-stoves and double-paned windows mocked at the efforts of the wintry winds and kept perpetual summer within. In the large barn were farm-wagons, a carriage, a buggy, a sleigh--a vehicle for every purpose. The farmer invited us one morning to step into a large sled which stood at the door, and took us half a mile to his stock-yards. There we saw fat, sleek cattle by the dozen and fat hogs by the score, great cribs bursting with corn, a windmill pump and other conveniences for watering stock. Besides all these possessions this man owns two or three other good farms, and has money loaned on mortgages; in short, is worth about fifty thousand dollars, every cent of which he has gained by his own exertions in the last twenty years. He said: "When my father died and his estate was divided among his children, each of us received eighty-three dollars as his share. I resolved then that if thrift and energy could avail anything I would have more than that to leave to each of my children when I died. It has required constant hard work and shrewd planning, but I have gained my stake, and am not a very old man yet," passing his hand over his hair, which was thinly sprinkled with gray. This man gave us a description of a tornado which passed over that portion of the State a number of years ago. It was shortly after he was married and while he was staying at his father-in-law's house. The whole family were away from home that day, and when they returned they found only the cellar. The house had been lifted from its foundation, and carried so far on the mighty wings of the hurricane that nothing pertaining to it was ever found except the rolling-pin and a few boards of the yellow-painted kitchen-floor. Of a new farm-wagon nothing remained but one tire, and that was flattened out straight. The trees that stood in the yard had been broken off at the surface of the ground. The grass lay stretched in the direction of the hurricane as if a flood of water had passed over it. Horses, cattle and human beings had been lifted and carried several rods through the air, then cast violently to earth again. Those who witnessed the course of the tornado said that it seemed to strike the ground, then go up in the air, passing harmlessly over a mile or two of country, then strike again, all the time whirling over and over, and occasionally casting out fragments of the spoils it had gathered up. After passing east to a point beyond the Mississippi it disappeared.