"The girls and Ed have been to the depot so often, and I wanted them to go to-day, but they said they just knew you wouldn't come. I thought you would surely be here to eat your birthday dinner with us yesterday." "Well, Auntie, Salt Valley was overflooded, and I couldn't get to the depot; so I ate it with cousin Maggie. But that is the way; I come just when I am given up for good." Then came Uncle John, Emma, Annie, Mary, Ed, and Dorsie, with his motherless little Gracie and Arthur. After the first greeting was over, Aunt said: "What a blessing it is that Norval got well!" "Norval got well? Why Aunt, what do you mean?" "Didn't they write to you about his being so sick?" "No, not a word." "Well, he was very low with scarlet fever, but he is able to be about now." "Oh! how thankful I am! What if Norval had died, and I away!" And then I told of the lady I had met that was going to see her brother, perhaps already dead, and how it had brought with such force the thought of what such word would be to me about Norval. How little we know what God in His great loving kindness is sparing us! I cannot tell you all the pleasure of this visit. To be at "Uncle John's" was like being at home; for we had always lived in the same village and on adjoining farms. Then too, we all had the story of the year to tell since they had left Pennsylvania for Nebraska. But the saddest story of all was the death of Dorsie's wife, Mary Jane, and baby Ruth, with malaria fever. To tell you of this country, allow me to begin with Blue Springs--a town just one mile east, on the line of the U.P.R.R., and on the banks of the Big Blue river, which is a beautiful stream of great volume, and banks thickly wooded with heavy timber--honey locust, elm, box elder, burr oak, cottonwood, hickory, and black walnut. The trees and bushes grow down into the very water's edge, and dip their branches in its waves of blue. This river rises in Hamilton county, Nebraska, and joins the Republican river in Kansas. Is about 132 miles long. I cannot do better than to give you Mr. Tyler's story as he gave it to us. He is a hale, hearty man of 82 years, yet looks scarce 70; and just as genteel in his bearing as though his lot had ever been cast among the cultured of our eastern cities, instead of among the early settlers of Nebraska, as well as with the soldiers of the Mexican war. He says: "In 1859 I was going to join Johnston's army in Utah, but I landed in this place with only fifty cents in my pocket, and went to work for J. H. Johnston, who had taken the first claim, when the county was first surveyed and organized. About the only settlers here at that time were Jacob Poof, M. Stere, and Henry and Bill Elliott, for whom Bill creek is named. The houses were built of unhewn logs.