Page:Six months in Kansas.djvu/66

the manner of a bedstead, believing they will be softer than the bars of wood laid across. We get them in readiness ; hunt out the two blankets and one pillow, which we brought along in a trunk for any emergency. The "Bay State shawls" are fastened up and turned into tapestry against the walls, back of the lounges. Two quilts of stripped-up dresses, done by your hand, dear mother, are brought from the chest, and with them sheets, too, with the New England clean-odor still in their folds 1 What nice little beds they seem, if they are but prairie grass. Now, just as we light a candle, comes a dried, mottled little man, with the stove. He is equal to what he undertakes, and soon puts it in the right place, with the long funnel peering out above the roof. He kindles a fire to make sure his work is well done, and squats himself upon the floor to watch the result, and rest himself. I stand with the candle in a Japan candlestick of curious pattern, having a tube for matches, a dinner-plate-like bottom, from the centre of which rises a spy-glass set of tubes, which push the candle up or down as may be desired. The little man warms his be-