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Observer, Jan. 1, '72.

R. HAY AT THE PRAIRIE FIRES.

"IT may not be uninteresting to the readers of the Wigan Observer to know that the steamship Spain, in which I sailed with my family from Liverpool to New York, in September last, proved a very seaworthy vessel, and though purposely deprived of two fans of her screw before leaving Liverpool, she made the passage in twelve days, arriving in New York harbour on the morning of Tuesday, October 2nd. I do not purpose here to give any details of the voyage or of our journey inland, further than to say that, in carriages far surpassing English ordinary first-class, we did a journey of 1600 miles to Manhattan, Kansas, in 3 days, including one night's stoppage at St. Louis. The cost of this journey by the slow or emigrant train is 27 dollars (about £5), and the time would be five days, and the baggage 80lbs. to each adult. We travelled by a special colonist's ticket, which, for 35 dollars, gives you first-class accommodation and speed and 150lbs. of luggage to each adult. On the whole, with a family the colonist's ticket is the cheapest. The ordinary first-class fare is 47 dollars.

"We arrived at Manhattan at five in the morning of Wednesday, October 10th, and found at the Post-office your paper of September 29th waiting for me, and also a letter which I had posted in Wigan to my brother here eight days before I left England, consequently he was unapprised of our arrival, so I had to hire a waggon, and put my luggage on it, and my family at the top of that, and start out for the prairies. We found the roads pretty good country roads, the settlers being as numerous along the route as farms along the roads of North Lancashire or Mid Cheshire, though much of the country is unenclosed. The route led by the Kansas river westward, then southerly along a stream named McDowell's

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Creek, then along a small branch creek to my brother's residence. He has 160 acres of land, of which about 30 is enclosed, being good arable land, and there is about 60 more fit for the plough. The rest is timber or rock.

The country is a lofty table-land, perfectly level at top, but deeply cloven by the Kansas river and its tributary creeks, so that there is hereabout a variety of hill and dale very like East Lancashire and the West Riding of York, except that the English hill-tops are more rounded than these. The plateau is composed of magnesian limestone, so that the waters of all the springs are hard, and the ancient presence of the sea (inland or otherwise) is marked by a succession of steps on the sides. of every hill or bluff. These ancient sea beaches are very like those near Lancaster known as Cromwell's Steps.

"On the day of our arrival all the bluffs, both sides and summits, were brown with their covering of long dried prairie grass. On the night of our arrival, at several points beyond the hills bounding the creek valley, we saw the sky reddened much in the way that the Kirkless furnaces redden your Wigan sky on a cloudy night, and upon inquiry as to the cause were informed that these were the fires on the distant prairies. Next day I went out on horseback with my brother, and on our way home about five o'clock, and just coming in sight of the valley that is our home, we saw a great crest of flame, half a mile long, sweeping over a shoulder and through a gap at the head of the vale. My brother left me with some hurried instructions, and he rode round to summon his neighbours to fight the fire. I galloped home, and we got old sacks and cloths and a barrel of water in the wagon, with two horses, and sat down to a hurried meal, when

Observer, Jan. 1, '72

several men galloped up and we were | in buckets, new comers taking their

soon started up the valley. There is one settler above here, and my brother rode forward to his house to see if round his farm would not be the best place to begin the fight. We were now well up the creek, and the flames were out of sight, black smoke and a lurid glow telling their proximity behind the bluffs. Then they reached the crests of several hills at once, and the landscape was as light as day. Then we hastened, but our speed was checked by the coming off of a wheel tire, so two or three buckets had to be filled from the barrel and carried forward. Then my brother returned with the intelligence that the settler above had burnt round his home and was safe, and that he and his son would soon be down to help us. So at the one end of the lee side of a large arena of mown grass, where the hay was still in cocks, we commenced operations. Diamond cut diamond-fire against fire! With matches we set fire to the edge of the new-mown grass, and then, assisted by the wind, whipped it out with the wet clothes along the edge nearest to us, and the wind drove the flames on the outer edge with a roaring, fearful glare, towards the fire, which, fortunately for us, had passed to leeward a couple of miles over the bluffs, and was advancing from the north towards us against the wind. We whipped it out all along the edges of the hayfield, then, kindling and burning along the waggon trail homewards, and whipping it out as we advanced, our fire running up the hillsides in wide lanes of devastation, to be extinguished in the wider desolation of the prairie fire.

"Sometimes tearing up grass (and our hands too, for the grass is very coarse); sometimes rushing fiercely and swinging our wet clothes vigorously; sometimes scorched by the flames at a bend of the road or turn of the wind, calling for more water

turn in the fierce fight, the stars paled in the glow of the fire, and great crests and columns of flame sweeping over the bluffs and down ravines, and leaving blackened ruin. So we fought for more than half a mile, when one sent back to survey reported fire again at the head of the creek and advancing down the windward side. This was terrible. Not only the hay we had just saved was endangered, but all the grass that pastured the cattle on the southern slopes, and all the hay and wheat in stacks on the farm, and the still ungathered corn were now risked. But the workers were numerous, and I was one who left the place we had reached to go back beyond the hayfield and commence again; and when we got there we met a curved line of fire more than a mile long. Fortunately a party from the next valley met us there, and in half an hour the glare was changed to blackness, and we went again to join the party who were left fighting the fire towards the farm. They had saved it, and were firing the grass a little to the west of it, and the surging of the flames in wide lanes up each hillside, and the roaring of the fires till they extinguished each other, made an impression not soon to be forgotten. Then some half mile west of the house we fired for the last time, and whipped out the flames along the near edge, and then our party broke up, leaving the fight for others whose homesteads were lower down, and who would have to be up most of the night. We returned, after thanking those who had helped us, about eleven p.m., black, grimy, scorched, and weary, after a running fight of more than five hours. The thanks we tendered to neighbours were given heartily, but they said that compli ments were out of place then. None had exceeded his duty. So it was, All had to unite to save all, and by the joint exertions a wide piece of

The Ecclesiastical Observer, Jan. 1, "72.

HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE.

35

grass land on the south of the creek "I was congratulated on having is saved for the use of the cattle of such an experience so soon, as it was the district till Christmas. Next day said I should see nothing worse of revealed a scene of blackened devasta- any kind, and this is the worst fire tion, and the lines of the ancient sea there has been for several years. beaches showed lines of water-worn Since then we have had frost and rock, white limestone, ghastly amidst rain, but the grass on the bluffs is the blackness. On ascending the again springing green, and a week of bluffs the desolation seemed terrible, fine weather such as this May-day and days after we heard of fences (November 15) will bring up succuand stacks and lives lost on that ter- lent food for cattle in place of the rible night of fire. dried herbage destroyed. R. HAY.

HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE.

In fine, whatever is grandest and best and most enduring in human achievements, is directly or indirectly the issue and fruit of the inner life. Whoever has conceived in himself any fruitful, world-renewing thought, whoever has proposed to himself any arduous and saving work or mission, has been guided thereto by secret meditation. Alone, in the wilderness, battling with self and the world, the Son of Man laid fast the foundations of the Christian ages. In the solitudes of monastic seclusion, the great Reformer and father of Protestantism, received into his soul the new evangel of faith and freedom.

The solitary thinkers, they are the world's rulers, they are the creators, they are the future, they are fate. In lonely self-communion, the mind encounters the primordial powers that have the shaping of our own and the world's destinies. There, in their secret laboratory, the silent mothers, Reason, Imagination, Faith and Will, devise and mould the coming time. Who can guess what new births of social life are yet to spring from that unknown world, which contains the archetypes and rudiments of all things?

Man has searched creation through in quest of knowledge; he has looked into every corner of the habit

able globe, he has studied the products of every zone, he has sounded the seas and measured the heavens, he has noted the structure of every creature and the path of every star; there is no inquiry so arduous which he has not attempted, no science so perplexing which he has not pursued. He has made himself acquainted with the world of his surrounding. But that inner world, enclosed within the walls of the fleshly frame, the world of ideas, so bounded in space, so boundless in wealth and capacity, who shall fathom? The possibilities of material nature we are fast ascertaining, and may hope one day to fully explore and comprehend. But the possibilities of the spirit, of life as shaped by the spirit, who can divine? "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." We know not what the future has in store for the race. But when we compare the idea in our mind with the facts of life, there opens to our thought an inexhaustible field of moral enterprise, an interminable prospect of ends to be achieved and victories won.

God be thanked for the limitless longing, the unquenchable hope; for the unknown wealth and incalculable powers of the inner life!

F. H. HEDGE, D.D.

Observer, Jan. 1, 7%.

THE CHRISTIAN HOUSEHOLD.

THERE is nothing on earth more | stantial bliss, while its tears and sorheavenly than a well-ordered Chris- rows stand in hopeful contrast with tian family. In it are no selfish that land where all "tears are wiped interests. The joy of one is the joy away, where death never invades.” of all. If one suffers, all suffer; if "Like the bright stars that shine with matchless light, Ever unchanging in their holy ray, one prospers, all rejoice. It may be And in their glory shining through the night, truly said, that "no one liveth to Perhaps unseen in the clear light of day. himself," and surely "no one dieth So, love, whose face is ever fair and bright, May be unnoticed while the sunbeams play, to himself." The members of such But when affliction comes, the soul to blight, a household are bound to each other 'Tis then love has its sweetest, happiest sway." by the ties of love. Its ligaments Love reigns supreme in the Christypify the golden chain that binds tian household, and in all respects it kindred hearts in heaven. Its joys is a lovely type of heaven. are but the prelude to more subJ. C. IRVIN.

HIDDEN CROSSES.

I do not ask from thee, O Lord,
A cup of reddest wine;
I do not ask for brightest beams
Upon my path to shine;

I do not ask in fullest fields
My busy scythe to sway;
I only ask for strength to lift
The Crosses in my way.

Those nameless crosses thou alone,

By any power, canst see,

So subtly covered from all ken

But thy full sympathy;

Those dim-lined crosses, wreathed with flowers,

Which friends, unwitting weave,

And by imperfeet human act
The wounded spirit grieve.
I do not ask, O gracious Lord,
For bliss bestowed on none-
To know and to be fully known
By each beloved one;

I only ask, oh! tenderest Love,
Since none our hearts may guess,
For bravery to bear the thorns
That 'neath the roses press.

The ponderous cross we cannot hide-
Incentive to despair-

Invokes the martyr in our breasts,

Which sternly helps to bear

A measured burden all deplore;

But human sympathy

Is slow to touch the hidden cross,

Thy clear eyes only see.

Thou who alone of all our friends

Hast tasted every cup,

And by the bitterness of each

Knowest to bear us up;

Oh! give me grace to wear my cross,

A secret still with thee,

And live in the sustaining power

Of thy sufficiency.

MARY B. DODGE.

Observer, Feb. 1, '72.

ONE YEAR OF CHURCH LIFE-A RETROSPECT AND A COMPARISON.

A SERMON FOR THE LAST NIGHT IN THE YEAR, BY DAVID KING. BRETHREN, friends and neighbours,-We have come to the last Lord's Day and to the last evening in the year. In some six hours A.D. 1871 will have passed to the sepulchre of its predecessors. All its work will have been done: all its influence will remain, not only for time, but along the ceaseless ages of eternity. Souls have this year been saved; and souls have this year been for ever lost. Christians have this year advanced in the divine life, and are now better prepared to finish their course with joy; and Christians have this year, in too many instances, declined in spirituality, and are now in imminent danger of making shipwreck of faith.

The close of the year is certainly an appropriate time for retrospection. Through the mercy of God we are here; where the wrong may be righted. The pathway of repentance, leading to endless glory, still invites the erring to enter. Let us, then, this night, look carefully into both our inner and our outer life-what we are in heart and what we are in action. What report does the year bear forth in regard to our exterior church-life, and what with reference to our heart, as it stands unveiled before the All-seeing One?

This night (D.v.) we hold two meetings, the present and a Watch Night service. To the latter of these meetings we shall assign the closer, inner examination. Then we shall more especially endeavour to gaze into our own hearts, and endeavour to see ourselves as we are seen of God. In this meeting, and in this discourse, we shall seek rather to look briefly over our year of church-life. We shall not so much inquire what we have been at home; how we have behaved as husbands, wives, parents, children, employers, servants, &c., as we shall seek to review our doings and omissions in the work of the church. Are we elders, evangelists, deacons, visitors, teachers, exhorters, Sunday school instructors, tract distributors and contributors to the Fellowship? How, then, have we discharged the duties that have devolved upon us? What report of our stewardship does the expiring year bear up to God?

I invite you to scan a year of church-life-a year of our church-life, as it closes upon us this night. I propose that we do this, to some extent, by means of a comparison-that we take another year of church-life and look at our last year in the light of that year. I propose, then, that we compare the first year of the Church of Christ with the year of churchlife we this night conclude.

You will observe that I have entered upon my sermon without giving the text. I had better at once supply the deficiency. But don't open your Bibles; defer that till you get home. The text, then, for this discourse (of no part of which do I intend to give an exhaustive examination), is the first eight chapters of the Acts of Apostles, which chapters contain the only reliable record of the first year of the Church of Christ. Its birth-day, the day of its formal inauguration, was the day of Pentecost, next following the resurrection of the Saviour. On that day the Gospel of this Dispensation was first preached; three thousand were then baptized; and daily afterwards the saved were added to the church. That year, I presume, terminated some while after the dispersion of the church and the preaching of the Gospel, by Phillip, in Samaria.

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