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before you. As I look at the pages over which I have labored so long, I feel [[strikethrough]] but one [/strikethrough]] keenly one regret — that the cold, black & white lines cannot give you the pictures which I see as I look at them. The little log houses, built by the man's hand, put up, as one can easily see by a man who had never been taught by theory or observation how to rear a house. Yet there it stands — & within the mother sits, gathering her children closely about her, while the fire crackles an emphatic accompaniment to the father's story as he tells me of his land. How he fell down every few feet, when he first held the plow. No one showed him how to hold it, or how his pony died in the furrows, too weak to pull the plow through the sod. [[strike-through]] How he put in his fruit trees 2 or 3 feet [/strike-through]] The tent where we sit round the