All the while the tent is as bright with lightning as with the sun at noonday. By the side of my cot is a book which I have been reading; taking it in my hand, I read the finest print, noted the hour, minute, and position of the second-hand upon my watch. Looking out through the opening of the fly, I behold the distant woodland, the fences, the bearded grain laid prostrate by the blast, the rain-drops falling aslant through the air, the farm-house a half-mile distant,--all revealed by the red glare of the lightning. All the landscape is revealed. For an instant I am in darkness, then all appears again beneath the lurid light. The storm grows wilder. The gale becomes a tempest, and increases to a tornado. The thunder crashes around, above, so near that the crackling follows in an instant the blinding flash. It rattles, rolls, roars, and explodes like bursting bombs. The tent is reeling. Knowing what will be the result, I hurry on my clothing, and have just time to seize an india-rubber coat before the pins are pulled from the ground. I spring to the pole, determined to hold on to the last. [Illustration: IN THE STORM.] Though the lightning is so fearful, and the moment well calculated to arouse solemn thoughts, we cannot restrain our laughter when two occupants of an adjoining tent rush into mine in the condition of men who have had a sousing in a pond. The wind pulled their tent up by the roots, and slapped the wet canvas down upon them in a twinkling. They crawled out like muskrats from their holes,--their night-shirts fit for mops, their clothing ready for washing, their boots full of water, their hats limp and damp and ready for moulding into corrugated tiles. It is a ludicrous scene. I am the central figure inside the tent,--holding to the pole with all my might, bareheaded, barefooted, my body at an angle of forty-five degrees, my feet sinking into the black mire,--the dripping canvas swinging and swaying, now lifted by the wind and now flapping in my face, and drenching anew two members of Congress, who sit upon my broken-down bed, shivering while wringing out their shirts! When the fury of the storm is over, I rush out to drive down the pins, and find that my tent is the only one in the encampment that is not wholly prostrated. The members of the party are standing like _shirted_ ghosts in the storm. The rotund form of our M. D. is wrapped in the oil-cloth table-cover. For the moment he is a hydropath, and complacently surveys the wreck of tents. The rain falls on his bare head, the water streams from his gray locks, and runs like a river down his broad back; but he does not bow before the blast, he breasts it bravely. I do not hear him, but I can see by his features that he is silently singing the Sunday-school song,-- "I'll stand the storm, It won't be long." Tents, beds, bedding, clothing, all are soppy and moppy, and the ground a quagmire. We go ankle deep into the mud. We might navigate the prairies in a boat.