Here, where Nature invites to tranquil occupations and even exercises of the mind, he trained the latent energies of his will for action in the great drama that overturned a throne and transformed a nation.
Here, till very lately, stood his "barn," and here he drilled the first squadron of his "Ironsides." My friend and host drove me one day to see a fen-farm a few miles beyond Ramsey, at which we remained over night and enjoyed the old- fashioned English hospitality of the establishment with lively relish.

It was called "The Four-Hundred-Acre-Farm," to distinguish it from a hundred others, laid out on the same dead level, with lines and angles as straight and sharp as those of a brick.

You will meet scores of persons in England who speak admiringly of the great prairies of our Western States--but I never saw one in Illinois as extensive as the vast level expanse you may see in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire.

In fact, the space of a large county has been fished up out of a shallow sea of salt water by human labor and capital.

I will not dwell here upon the expense, process, and result of this gigantic operation.