* * * * * Thus the New shoulders the Old, and our transition is still swift enough to be a spectacle, as was its earlier phase which gave our Middle West to cabins and plough horses, with a tendency away from wigwams and bob-whites. And in this local warfare between Old and New a chief figure is Calliope Marsh. She is a little rosy, wrinkled creature officially--though no other than officially--pertaining to sixty years; mender of lace, seller of extracts, and music teacher, but of the three she thinks of the last as her true vocation. * * * * * With us all the friendship idea prevails: we accept what Progress sends, but we regard it in our own fashion. Our improvements, like our entertainments, our funerals, our holidays, and our very loves, are but Friendship-Village exponents of the modern spirit. Perhaps, in a tenderer significance than she meant, Calliope characterized us when she said: "This town is more like a back door than a front--or, givin' it full credit, anyhow--it's no more'n a side door, with no vines." EBEN EUGENE REXFORD. The subject of this sketch has lived in Wisconsin since the seventh year of his life. He was born at Johnsburgh, New York, on September 16, 1848. With his parents he removed to Wisconsin, where he came to love the products of the soil and the processes by which they might be made more and more beautiful. Not merely plant growth has been of interest to him; the development of Wisconsin institutions also, especially its schools, has been of the most vital concern to him. Few men have been more deeply interested in the schools of any community than has Mr. Rexford in the schools of his village, and few have more effectively encouraged the teaching of agricultural facts in the schools than he. Mr. Rexford's life has been spent quite largely at his country home near Shiocton, where he has found much of the material for the line of writing in which he has been especially interested. The country home has furnished him with opportunities for pleasurable development of which few have even dreamed. His career is worth studying, if for no other reason than to disprove the thought that rural life is a life of toil and hardship devoid of the privilege of acquiring that finer sense for the beautiful. Mr. Rexford's life has been rich in the companionship of people and of animals and plants. This last has given that training which makes him an authority along the line of floriculture.