Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: STAGE-STRUCK. CHAPTER I. La Crosse is one of the prettiest towns in Wisconsin. It takes its name from the prairie on which the first settlement was made, more than forty years ago, by Colonel Nathan Myrick. Whence the prairie took its name is not known unless from a tribe.of Redmen who at some remote date claimed it for their hunting- ground. In front, on a level with it, flows the rapid Mississippi, while beyond and behind rise hills, or
bluffs as they are commonly called, which form gigantic barriers and nestle both river and town in their protective embrace. The situation is beautiful. Islands gleam here and there in the river, and in summer when seen from the town look like small specks of emerald green. A little below the city, and abutting on the bank, is a picturesque old mill. Close by, there is a long strip of sanded shore; and here the workingmen’s children on summer afternoons play, and wade out into the river, dressed in long old- fashioned cotton frocks, which they borrow of their grannies when they go down by the mill to paddle. Here the crystal waters run up and down the sand like silver serpents, licking and kissing the whitegrains, which glimmer with diamond-like brightness. In winter the river is frozen over, and there are frequent sleighing-parties on it. Usually these parties take place at night, when the atmosphere is so still and clear that sounds travel for miles, and the calm air is made merry with the sound of sleigh-bells and of laughter. On a bright night in the latter part of December, a party of young people glided over the ice. They were going down the river about sixteen miles in sleighs to Smith’s Landing, where the evening was to wind up with a candy-pull and a dance at Deacon Hart’s. But this was not all: an important ceremony was t…