That evening dozens of persons from ten miles around called at the Matney home to welcome and visit with the Newcomers. They were nearly all old-timers, and they represented former inhabitants of at least seven of the States of the United States and three foreign countries. There was a Yankee from Maine, a Digger from the hills of North Carolina, a Mudsucker from Illinois, and all kinds of Corncrackers from Kentucky, besides a fine old Englishman and a sturdy German; and they told the Newcomer boys that the school-teacher was a Scotchman who talked through his nose and said lots of funny things, and that further up the creek lived a Manxman by the name of Quayle. It seems that Kansas had gathered these people from many corners of the earth, to the end that they might be blended into a new people with a new spirit that should mark the character of a new State. The Newcomers did not know that they were newcomers for some days, nor until they heard people calling them by that name. One day one of the boys rode with John Oliver to Carbondale; and as Oliver pulled up to the sidewalk in front of a store, someone called out, "John, where did you get that kid?" And John answered, "He belongs to a newcomer just moved on the crick. He's got a whole passel of 'em. I seed this 'un in the road and fetched him along." John Oliver was from Tennessee, and he had his own peculiar way of expressing himself. He was a lot of fun for the Yankee neighbor. The Newcomers were soon settled in a house of their own near the present site of the stone bridge, and every day of that glorious fall and winter was a day of enjoyment to them; and over and over, as they gathered around the big fireplace of an evening, they rejoiced together because of the glorious welcome that Kansas had given them, and of the more glorious welcome, if possible, that had been given to them by the people of Kansas--old and newcomers--from so many different lands, with so many different ideas and so many different ways and habits, yet all filled with that exaltation which came to them like a breath of freedom from the prairie, and has made them and others like them into a new race, filled with a new spirit, which we call Kansas. An Old Timer