Frontier settlers are always accommodating and generous. If one had more than he needed, he would invariably share the surplus with his neighbors. The neighbors would all turn in to help a new-comer,--haul his logs, build his house, and do other little services, for him. The isolated condition and mutual aims and aspirations of the settlers brought them nearer together than in older communities. On Sunday afternoons all would meet at some centrally located place, and spend the day together. A cup of coffee with a couple of slices of bread and butter, would furnish a royal entertainment, and when we got so far along that we could afford some pie or cake for dessert, the good house-wives were in a perfect ecstacy. The joys and sorrows of one, were shared by the others, and nowhere in the wide world, except in a military camp, have I witnessed so much genuine cordial friendship and brotherhood as among the frontier settlers in the West. One fine Sunday morning that summer, all the settlers met under two oak trees on the prairie, near where the present church stands, for the first religious service in the settlement. It had been agreed that some of the men should take turns to read one of Luther's sermons at each of these gatherings, and I was selected as reader the first day. Some prayers were said and Swedish hymns sung, and seldom did a temple contain more devout worshipers than did that little congregation on the prairie. Before the winter of 1854-55 set in, we had quite a large community in Vasa, and had raised considerable grain, potatoes and other provisions. During that winter the Sioux Indians again became our neighbors, and frequently supplied us with venison in exchange for bread and coffee. The following spring and summer the settlers increased still faster, several more oxen and other cattle, with a horse or two, were brought in, and I had no longer the exclusive privilege of hauling goods on the little truck wagon. That summer I again went to Illinois to meet a large party of newly-arrived emigrants from Sweden, who formed a settlement in Vasa, known as Skåne. The people from different provinces would group themselves together in little neighborhoods, each assuming in common parlance the name of their own province; thus we have Vasa, Skåne, Småland and Jemtland.