Their court commenced on the next Monday, as the barbecue was on a Saturday, and the candidates for Governor, and for Congress, as well as my competitor and myself, all attended. The thought of having to make a speech made my knees feel mighty weak, and set my heart to fluttering almost as bad as my first love scrape with the Quaker’s niece. But as good luck would have it, these big candidates spoke nearly all day, and when they quit, the people were worn out with fatigue, which afforded me a good apology for not discussing the government. But I listened mighty close to them, and was learning pretty fast about political matters. When they were all done, I got up and told some laughable story, and quit. I found I was safe in those parts, and so I went home, and did not go back again till after the election was over. But to cut this matter short, I was elected, doubling my competitor, and nine votes over. Early Days in Illinois Morris Birkbeck was an Englishman who came to the United States and settled in southeastern Illinois where he founded the town of Albion. His account of the people and life in Illinois in 1817, just before it became a state, is good reporting. He has a sharp eye for detail, and because he was fresh from Europe, he sees and records the contrasts between the Midwestern backwoods and the Old World. The following selection comes from his book, _Notes on a Journey in America, from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois_. _August 1._ Dagley’s, twenty miles north of Shawnee Town. After viewing several beautiful prairies, so beautiful with their surrounding woods as to seem like the creation of fancy, gardens of delight in a dreary wilderness, and after losing our horses and spending two days in recovering them, we took a hunter as our guide and proceeded across the Little Wabash to explore the country between that river and the Skillet-fork. Since we left the Fox settlement, about fifteen miles north of the Big Prairie, cultivation has been very scanty, many miles intervening between the little “clearings.” This may therefore be truly called a new country. These lonely settlers are poorly off—their bread corn must be ground thirty miles off, requiring three days to carry to the mill and bring back the small horse-load of three bushels. Articles of family manufacture are very scanty, and what they purchase is of the meanest quality and excessively dear: yet they are friendly and willing to share their simple fare with you. It is surprising how comfortable they seem, wanting everything. To struggle with privations has now become the habit of their lives, most of them having made several successive plunges into the wilderness, and they begin already to talk of selling their “improvements” and getting still farther “back” on finding that emigrants of another description are thickening about them.