Uncle George lived on a poverty-stricken farm upon the flattest of prairies. I hardly know how I did grow up there, it was such a wretched, miserable place. Although I had never experienced any thing different, it was so forlorn an existence, that I chafed inwardly against it every hour. I possessed a kind of dumb consciousness that surely, surely I must be made for something better than this. I saw nothing of the world, nothing of humanity outside of my uncle’s family, and the two or three rough farm hands that he occasionally employed. I would rather have had the cattle, the poor half-starved cattle, for companions than these. They were none of them kind to me. I know not whether father ever paid any thing for my board; but I know I worked far harder than any hired servant. I did not rebel outwardly, but I was constantly unhappy. Was I to live on all my days in this hopeless, miserable way? Was there never to be any thing better? Looking out of the window, I thought of the great, busy world, and the far-off, unknown cities; but before my eyes there was only a dead level of the hateful yellow prairie, and above, the colorless sky stretched itself out in a gigantic, measureless blank. From this life it was that father came, without word or warning, and took me. I know now that he only wanted me with him as a convenience, but then I was wild with delight. In my great craving for human sympathy I would have loved father with all my heart, had he given me any encouragement. I did love him for this one good deed. I knew not where he was taking me, but I was sure it could be no worse place. With an intense joy I went up and surveyed, for the last time, the miserable little room where I had vainly cried so many hot tears over my weary existence. I stayed my steps a moment beside the one window, a little window facing westward. From here I had seen the only beauty that ever came before my passionate eyes flame up with a splendor, as of gold, along the sky when the sun went down. A thousand times my yearning heart had watched the short-lived glory fade, like a mockery, into the dreary blank. From here, too, year by year, with a rank rebellion in my soul, I had looked out at the shadowless prairie that lay over all the earth, a great, glaring, uncovered, yellow blister. So it was with nothing but glad emotion that I stood upon the spot consciously for the last time. I had a keen, absorbing love of the beautiful, a hunger insatiable, that unfed was sapping my life. This wretched existence had almost killed me; but for the change I believe that my longing spirit, like my mother’s in the far past, would have broken its wings. Now there was an avenue of escape suddenly opened up before me—of escape from the dreadful monotony, from the intolerable agony of everlasting sameness that, by day and night, recurring forever, had made up the tiresome years as they passed. My whole being was turned to my father with one inspiration of gratitude.