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Show THE HAWKEYES. 19 translations of " Pennsylvania Dutch," the negroisms of Kentucky and Virginia, and certain phrases native to the Ohio Valley; and in my boyhood I often heard it verbatim as here given. The Iowa pioneers had developed a marked faculty for taking care of themselves, and making the non- resident owner of real estate help de-velop the country. Three- fourths of the taxation was laid upon land, chattels being almost exempt ; and, in the valuation, no distinction was made between slough and upland, vacant and improved. Villages, where, there was much non- resident property, were generally well im-proved; and the side- walks were always best before the non-resident's lots, direct taxation being in the same ratio. If he did not come out and enjoy the promenade he had paid for, it was his own fault. The school laws of Iowa are sur-prisingly liberal in this respect, allowing a school in every township or district where there are six children. The citizens have the right to organize a school district as they will, regardless of their number. One worthy in Wright County, finding himself, wife and seven chil-dren to be the only inhabitants of the township, forth-with called a school meeting, notices being posted ac-cording to law, elected himself director, fitted up one room in his dwelling for a school, and employed his THE NON- RESIDENT oldest daughter to teach the other six children. Thus he gave character to the settlement, and raised the money to im-prove his farm by simple compliance with the' law. And do such a people require Congressional protection from the bond- holders and grasping monopolists of the East? At the end of a week's leisurely travel, I was eighty miles from the Mississippi, and the appearance of the country had greatly changed. There were vast tracts of unsettled prairie ; timber had grown scarcer ; cultivated farms were rare, and just as the space between them increased the people grew warmer in their welcome. I was now away from the main line of emigration; and families in out- of- the- way places are nearly always hospitable. The chance traveler is as good as a newspaper, and is apt to be put to press on arrival. I soon learned to dread the wooded vales along the larger streams on account of the heat. To leave the high prairie for the " bottom " was like going from balmy May to sultry July. Regions where there is much wind are generally health-ful; but when the wind falls one is liable to fall with it. There are no hotter districts in the Union than Iowa and Minnesota during those very brief periods in summer when a dead calm prevails. Though I |