Isabella Burgess had been two years in the Western Female Seminary, at Oxford, Ohio, and Alfred Longley was completing his academical course at Knox College. Isabella came to see him graduate, and then together they started for their Indian home in Minnesota. It was about the first of July, 1858, and at midnight, when the steamboat on which they were traveling, having landed at Red Wing and discharged some freight, and pushed out again into the river, was found to be on fire. The alarm was given, and the passengers waked up, and the boat immediately turned again to the landing; but the fire, having caught in some cotton bales on the front deck, spread so rapidly that it was with difficulty the passengers made their escape, the greater part of them only in their night-dress. Their baggage was all lost. But the good people of Red Wing cared for the sufferers, and started them homeward, with such clothing as could be furnished. Of the catastrophe we knew nothing, until I met the children at St. Peter, whither they came by steamboat. This, and what had gone before, gave us something of a reputation of being a _fiery_ family, and the impression was increased somewhat when, nearly two years later, Martha Taylor, in her second year at Oxford, escaped by night from the burning Seminary building. After Alfred's return, in the summer of 1858, he spent a year at Hazelwood, in teaching a government school, and then joined the Theological Seminary at Chicago. In the summer of 1860, the absent ones were all at home. During the six years we had been at Hazelwood, two other children had been given us, Robert Baird and Mary Cornelia Octavia, which made a very respectable little flock of _eight_. _Twenty-five_ years had passed since Dr. Williamson came to the Dakotas. Many changes had taken place. It was fitting that the two families which remained should, in some proper way, put up a quarter-century milestone. And so we arranged an out-door gathering, at which we had food for the body and food for the mind. Among other papers read at this time was one which I prepared with some care, giving a short biographical sketch of all the persons who up to that time had been connected with the Dakota mission; a copy of which was afterward placed in the library of the Historical Society of Minnesota. * * * * *