"Next to our own home, we learned to love the homeland in 'the States,' whence our parents came. A longing desire to visit it possessed us. We thought that there we should find a heaven on earth. This may seem a strange idea; but as you think of us engulfed in heathenism and savage life, it will not seem so strange. It was like living at the bottom of a well, with only one spot of brightness overhead. Of course, it would be natural to think that upper world all brightness and beauty. Thus all our glimpses of another life than that of heathenism came from 'the States.' There all our ideas of Christianized society were located. The correspondence of our parents with friends left behind, the pages of the magazines and papers of the monthly mail, and the yearly boxes of supplies, were the tangible tokens which in our innocent minds awakened visions of the wonderful world of civilization and culture in 'the East.'
"These supplies were in reality, perhaps, very small affairs, but we thought them of fabulous value. Indeed they were everything to us. With the opening of the new year the list of purchases began to be arranged. Each item was carefully considered, and the wants of each of the family remembered. This was no small task when you had to look a year and a half ahead. What debates as to whether B could get on with one pair of shoes, or must have two; or whether C would need some more gingham aprons, or could make the old ones last through. And, then, it was so hard to remember mosquito bars and straw hats in January; but if they were forgotten once, the next January found them first on the list. It was fun to make up the lists, but not so exhilarating when, on summing up the probable cost, it was found to be too much, and then the cruel pen ran through many of our new-born hopes. Then the letter went on its way to Boston, or maybe to Cincinnati, and we waited its substantial answer. Sometimes our boxes went around by lazy sloops from Boston to New Orleans; thence the laboring steamboat bore them almost the whole length of the Father of Waters; then the flat-boatmen sweated and swore as they poled them up the Minnesota to where our teams met them to carry them for another week over the prairies. Now it was far on into rosy June. After such waiting, no wonder that everything seemed precious--the very hoops of the boxes and the redolent pine that made them; even the wrappers and strings of the packages were carefully laid away. And, thanks to the kind friends who have cared for this work at our several purchasing depots, our wants were generally capitally met; and yet sometimes the packer would arrange it so that the linseed oil would give a new taste to the dried apples, anything but appetizing, or turn the plain white of some long-desired book into a highly 'tinted' edition.