Last year I gathered the flowers of home with my own dear mother, and shared them with May, by laying them on her grave. To-day, all things have been entirely new and strange; but while I celebrate it on the wild boundless plains of Nebraska, yet almost untouched by the hand of man, dear father and mother are visiting the favorite mossy log, the spring in the wood, and the moss covered rocks where we children played at "house-keeping," and in my name, will gather and put to press leaves and flowers for me. Ah! yes! and are so lonely thinking of their daughter so far away. The sweetest flower gathered in all the years was Myrtle--sister Maggie's oldest child--who came to me for a May-flower in '76. But while the flowers bloomed for my gathering in '81, the grass was growing green upon her grave. And I know sister will not forget to gather and place on the sacred mound, "Auntie Pet's" tribute of love. Thus it is with a mingling of pleasures and pains, of smiles and tears that I am queen of my maying, with no brighter eyes to usurp my crown, for it is all my own day and of all the days of the year the dearest to me. "I think, Mr. Newell, we can live _good_ lives and yet not make the _most_ of life; our lives need crowding with much that is good and useful; and this is only the crowding in of a day that is very good and useful to me. For on this day I retrospect the past, and think of the hopes that bloomed and faded with the flowers of other years, and prospect the future, and wonder what will the harvest be that is now budding with the leaves for me and which I alone must garner." After a last look at the wide, wide country, that in a few years will be fully occupied with the busy children of earth, we left "Stone Butte," carrying from its stony, grassy sides and top many curious mementos of our May-day in Nebraska. Then I went farther north-west to visit the home of a "squaw man"--the term used for Indians who cannot endure the torture of the sun dance, and also white men that marry Indian maidens. On our way we passed a neatly built sod house, in which two young men lived who had lately come from Delaware, and were engaged in stock-raising, and enjoyed the life because they were doing well, as one of them remarked to Mr. N. I tell these little things that those who do not already know, may understand how Nebraska is populated with people from everywhere.