When the wheels of life bear me down for the last time, I ask for no higher compliment, I seek no truer statement of the work I have tried to do, than that which the white-headed old negress gave the beardless boy on the hot Corinth cornfield in 1862. Then, if I deserve it, let some one who loves me say, "Here is a Linkum soldier who has done got run over," one who, like his leader, tried to "pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever a flower would grow." EVERETT McNEIL. MOTHER'S WOLF STORY By Everett McNeil, for many years a resident of Stoughton, Wis., now living in New York. Taken from St. Nicholas, Vol. XXX, p. 387. Copyright by The Century Co. (For many years a resident of Stoughton; now living in New York. Author of The Cave of Gold, In Texas with Davy Crockett, The Totem of Black Hawk, Fighting with Fremont, The Boy Forty-Niners, etc.) When I was a boy there was one story which my sisters and brothers and I were never tired of hearing mother tell; for our own mother was its heroine and the scene of the thrilling chase was not more than a mile and a half from our own door. Indeed, we often went coasting on the very hill down which she took her fearful ride, and skated on the pond which was the scene of her adventure. I can still distinctly remember how, when the long winter evenings came and the snow lay deep on the ground and the wind whistled stormily without, we children would gather around the great sheet-iron stove in the sitting-room of the old farm-house and beg mother to tell us stories of the perils and hardships of her pioneer days; and how, invariably, before the evening was over some one of us would ask: "Now, mother, please do tell us, just once more, how you escaped from the wolves, when a girl, by coasting down Peek's Hill." Mother would pause in her knitting, and, with a smile, declare that she had already told us the story "forty-eleven times"; but, just to please so attentive an audience, she would tell it even once more. Then, while we children crowded closer around her chair, she would resume her knitting and begin: "When your grandfather settled in this part of Wisconsin I was a little girl thirteen years old. We moved into the log house father had prepared for us early in the spring, and by fall we had things fixed quite comfortable. The winter which followed was one of unusual severity. The snow fell, early in November, to the depth of three feet on the level; and the greater part of it remained on the ground all winter. This, of course, made grand coasting. Father made for me a sled with strong, hard, smooth hickory runners, and big enough for two to ride on. I declare, I don't believe there ever was such another sled for speed"; and mother's eyes would sparkle at the memories the thought of her faithful sled recalled.