Mr. Wallace had a clerical relative in Minnesota, who had influenced him in his decision to remove there; and that his family might go at once to some definite point, or home of their own, he wrote to the clergyman, commissioning him to purchase for him a farm. He did so. But on Mr. Wallace's arrival, it fell so far below his expectations that he sold it at a sacrifice, and went forth prospecting, locating at length where this account found them. It was late in the fall ere he could begin to build his cabin; the old settlers' story as to the mildness of the winters in that climate relieved his anxiety, however. The winter, nevertheless, set in early, and proved to be one of the coldest on record. He was overtaken without due preparation as to provisions. Nor was it otherwise with his neighbors, all new comers, like himself. The rigors of the prairie made it perilous to venture from home, and our emigrants, fresh from the abundance of the East, were brought to most wretched fare. Mr. W. was physically rugged, knowing nothing of the horrors of dyspepsia; and if there was only a sufficiency for the table, it mattered not to him what it was. Not so, unfortunately, with the invalid wife. There was little, at best, that she could eat that suited her diseased condition, and those very articles it was impossible to procure. One who was, providentially, an inmate of the household through the terrors and deprivations of that winter, says,— "I had read of the rigors of the frozen North, and here I had a taste of them. For months, in the most sheltered nooks, and on the sunniest roof-sides, the snow gave no signs of thawing, while from morn till night, on the frosty atmosphere, luminous pillars, and circles, and mock suns witnessed to the intensity of the cold; and the nights,—O, 'such' nights! why, you could 'hear' it freezing, freezing; the swine in their pens piled and crowded together, quarreling for the warmest place, uttering incessantly cries of distress, with which mingled the sharp reports, like the discharge of pistols, of the oaken shingles on the roof, as the nails that secured them burst. I don't know how we got through that winter. Mrs. W. had courage, endurance, was free-hearted to a fault, but the commonest articles had to be dispensed with. The mills were so remote that the corn stored in the attic could not be turned into meal, greatly as it was needed, save by the slow and imperfect process of grinding in a coffee-mill, suspended against the wall. Mr. W. was anxious and low-spirited enough, poor follow, frequently bursting out into bitter reflections on himself for bringing his wife to such a place.