Let us suppose travelers caught in a rain storm, who reach at last one of these western homes. There is a roof, a stick chimney, drenched cattle crowding in beneath a strawy barrack, and some forlorn fowls huddling under a cart. The log-house is a small one, though its neat corn-crib and chicken-coop of slender poles bespeaks a careful farmer. No gate is seen, but great bars which are let down or climbed over, and the cabin has only a back door. Within, everything ministers to the useful; nothing to the beautiful. Flitches of bacon, dried beef, and ham depend from the ceiling; pots and kettles are ranged in a row in the recess on one side the fireplace; and above these necessary utensils are plates and heavy earthen nappies. The axe and gun stand together in one corner. The good woman of the house is thin as a shadow, and pinched and wrinkled with hard labor. Little boys and girls are playing on the floor like kittens. A free and hospitable welcome is given to the travelers, their wet garments are ranged for drying on those slender poles usually seen above the ample fireplace of a log-cabin in the West, placed there for the purpose of drying sometimes the week's wash when the weather is rainy, sometimes whole rows of slender circlets of pumpkins for next spring's pies, or festoons of sliced apples. The good woman, after busying herself in those little offices which evince a desire to make guests welcome, puts an old cloak on her head and flies out to place tubs, pails, pans, and jars under the pouring eaves, intimating that as soap was scarce, she "must try and catch rain water anyhow." The "old man" has the shakes, so the woman has all to do; throws more wood on the fire and fans it with her apron; cuts rashers of bacon, runs out to the hen-coop and brings in new-laid eggs; mixes a johnny-cake and sets it in a pan upon the embers. While the supper is cooking the rain subsides to a sprinkle, and the travelers look at the surroundings of this pioneer household. The cabin stands in a prairie, skirted by a forest. A stream gurgles by. The prairie is broken with patches of corn and potatoes, which are just emerging from the rich black mould. Pig-pens, a barn, and corn-houses, a half-dozen sheep in an enclosure, cows and calves and oxen in a barn-yard, a garden patch, and hen-coops, and stumps of what were once mighty trees, tell the story of the farmer's labors; and the cabin, with all its appurtenances and surroundings, show how much the good woman has contributed to make it the abode of rustic plenty, all provided by the unaided toil of this pioneer couple. They had come from the East ten years before, and their cabin was the initial point from which grew up a numerous settlement. Other cabins sent up their smoke in the prairie around them. A school-house and church had been built, and a saw-mill was at work on the stream near by, and surveyors for a railroad had just laid out a route for the iron horse.