I sat looking at it, with the tears trickling from my eyes, the uplift of my soul more than I could bear.

It was not the thought of my mother that brought the tears to my eyes, but my happiness in finding the newest, strangest, most delightful, sternest, most wonderful thing in the world--the Iowa prairie--that made me think of my mother.

If I only could have found her alive! If I only could have had her with me! And as I thought of this I realized that the woman of the ferry had climbed over the back of the spring-seat and was sitting beside me.
"I don't wonder," said she, "that you cry.

Gosh! It scares me to death!".