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with feeling and earnestness.
THE STRANGER'S NARRATIVE
"
On the 19th of December, 1853, I started from St. Louis on the evening
train bound for Chicago. There were only twenty-four passengers, all
told. There were no ladies and no children. We were in excellent
spirits, and pleasant acquaintanceships were soon formed. The journey
bade fair to be a happy one; and no individual in the party, I think, had
even the vaguest presentiment of the horrors we were soon to undergo.
"At 11 P.M. it began to snow hard. Shortly after leaving the small
village of Welden, we entered upon that tremendous prairie solitude that
stretches its leagues on leagues of houseless dreariness far away toward
the Jubilee Settlements. The winds, unobstructed by trees or hills, or
even vagrant rocks, whistled fiercely across the level desert, driving
the falling snow before it like spray from the crested waves of a stormy
sea. The snow was deepening fast; and we knew, by the diminished speed
of the train, that the engine was plowing through it with steadily
increasing difficulty. Indeed, it almost came to a dead halt sometimes,
in the midst of great drifts that piled themselves like colossal graves
across the track. Conversation began to flag. Cheerfulness gave place
to grave concern. The possibility of being imprisoned in the snow, on
the bleak prairie, fifty miles from any house, presented itself to every
mind, and extended its depressing influence over every spirit.
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