calculated their fitness and their powers of labor. Besides this, they had taken with them the Swedish inclination for hospitality and a merry life, without sufficiently considering how long it could last. Each family built for itself a necessary abode, and then invited their neighbors to a feast. They had Christmas festivities and midsummer dances. But the first year's harvest fell short. The poorly tilled soil could not produce rich harvests. Then succeeded a severe winter, with snow and tempests, and the ill-built houses afforded but inadequate shelter; on this followed sickness, misfortunes, want of labor, want of money, want of all kinds. It is almost incredible what an amount of suffering some of these colonists must have gone through. Nearly all were unsuccessful as farmers; some of them, however, supported themselves and their families by taking to handcraft trades, and as shoemakers or tailors earned those wages which they would have been unable to earn by agriculture. To their honor it must be told that they, amid severe want, labored earnestly and endured a great deal with patient courage without complaining, and that they successfully raised themselves again by their labor. Neither were they left without aid from the people of the country when their condition became known.

Margaret Fuller (Marchioness Ossoli) made a journey into the Western States in company with Mrs. Clarke (the mother of those tall sons). Providence led her to the colonists on Pine Lake. Captain Schneidan was then lying on his sick-bed with an injury of the leg, which had kept him there for some months. His handsome young wife had been obliged, during that severe winter, to do the most menial work; had seen her first-born little one frozen to death in its bed in the room, into which snow and rain -found entrance. And they were in the midst of the wilderness alone. They had no means of obtaining help, which was extremely expensive in this district; the maid

servant whom they had for à short time had left them, and their neighbors were too far off, or were themselves also suffering under similar want. And now came the two la

dies from Boston.

Margaret Fuller thus writes of her visit in her "Summer on the Lakes:"

"In the inner room the master of the house was seated; he had been sitting there long, for he had injured his foot on shipboard, and his farming had to be done by proxy. His beautiful young wife was his only attendant and nurse, as well as farm-house keeper; and how well she performed hard and unaccustomed duties, the objects of her care showed; every thing belonging to the house was rude, but neatly arranged; the invalid, confined to an uneasy wooden chair (they had not been able to induce any one to bring them an easy chair from town), looked as neat and elegant as if he had been dressed by the valet of a duke. He was of noble blood, with clear, full blue eyes, calm features, a tempering of the soldier, scholar, and man of the world in his aspect; he formed a great but pleasing contrast to his wife, whose glowing complexion and dark mellow eye bespoke an origin in some climate more familiar with the sun. He looked as if he could sit there a great while patiently, and live on his own mind, biding his time; she, as if she could bear any thing for affection's sake, but would feel the weight of each moment as it passed.

"Seeing the album full of drawings, and verses which bespoke the circle of elegant and affectionate intercourse they had left behind, we could not but see that the young wife sometimes must need a sister, the husband a companion, and both must often miss that electricity which sparkles from the chain of congenial minds.

"I feel very differently about these foreigners from Americans; American men and women are inexcusable if they do not bring up children so as to be fit for all necessi

ties; that is the meaning of our star, that here, all men being free and equal, all should be fitted for freedom, and an independence by his own resources, wherever the changeful wave of our mighty stream may take him. But the star of Europe brought a different horoscope."

I must now add that which Margaret Fuller has not related, but which was told me; namely, how nobly she exerted herself with her friend on behalf of the unfortunate Swedes, and how in time a complete change was wrought in their circumstances. They removed from that solitary farm in the forest to Chicago. Schneidan obtained adequate surgical aid; recovered, and is at this moment the most skillful daguerreotypist, probably, in the whole state, and, as such, has made considerable gains. He is just now returned from New York, where he has taken a large and excellent daguerreotype of Jenny Lind. He is universally liked here. His lively, pretty wife now relates, laughing and crying at the same time, the occurrences of their life in the wilderness in a kind of medley of Swedish and English, which is charming. Uneonius and his wife removed hither also, but in better circumstances than the former.

She

Uneonius is just now at New York; he is gone to see Mademoiselle Lind, and obtain from her money for the completion of the Lutheran church at Chicago. I spent an evening with his wife. That gay, high-spirited girl, of whom I heard when she was married at Upsala to accompany her husband to the New World, she had gone through severe trials of sickness, want, and sorrow. had laid four children to rest in foreign soil. She had one boy remaining. She was still pretty, still young, but her cheerfulness-that was gone; and her fresh, courageous spirit was changed into quiet patience. She had now a small, new-built house, in a more healthy situation than where they had formerly lived, and very near to the little Lutheran church. The church is very ornamental,

but as yet unfinished internally. Here I saw somewhat above thirty children, Swedish and Norwegian, assembled to hear a lecture-a little company of kindly-looking, faircomplexioned, blue-eyed children! They were for the most part children of persons in low circumstances, who lived about the neighborhood on small farms. They learn in the school to read and write, as well in English as in their mother tongue. There are very few Swedes resident here. At Milwaukee, and in that part of Wisconsin, there are a great many.

I heard a good deal from Mr. Schneidan and his wife respecting Eric Jansen, and the circumstances which occasioned his death, but shall defer speaking of them till we meet. The man seems to have been of an enigmatical character, half a deceiver and half deceived (either by himself or his demon).

I saw one evening, which I spent with Mrs. Schneidan at her house, my "Belle of Baltimore," Hannah Hawkins; she is a pretty, quiet young girl, of that class of women who are capable of the most beautiful actions without having the least idea that they are doing any thing beau tiful. They are themselves moral beauty, and they follow the impulses of their nature as flowers follow theirs.

There are a great number of Germans in Chicago, especially among the tradespeople and handcraftsmen. The city is only twenty years old, and it has increased in that time to a population of twenty-five thousand souls. genuine "baby" of the Great West! but, as I have al ready said, somewhat unkemmed as yet. There is, however, here a street, or, more properly speaking, a row of houses or small villas along the shore of the lake, standing on elevated ground, which has in its situation a character of high life, and which will possess it in all respects. some day, for there are already people here from different parts of the globe who will constitute the sound kernel of a healthy aristocracy.

Chicago bears on its arms the name of "the City in the Garden;" and when the prairie land around it becomes garden, there will be reason for its poetical appellation.

I have seen here, also, light and lofty school-rooms, and have heard the scholars in them, under the direction of an excellent master, sing quartettes in such a manner as affected me to tears. And the children, how eager, how glad to learn they were! Hurra! The West builds light school-rooms where the young may learn joyfully, and sing correctly and sweetly! The West must progress nobly. The building of the Temple of the Sun has already commenced.

My friends here deplored the chaotic state, and the want of integrity which prevails in political affairs, and which may be principally attributed to the vast emigration of the rudest class of the European population, and the facility with which every civil right is obtained in the state. A year's residence in the state gives the immigrant the right of a citizen, and he has a vote in the election of the governors both of the city and the state. Unprincipled political agitators avail themselves of the ignorance of immigrants, and inveigle them by fine speeches. to vote for the candidate whom they laud, and who sometimes betrays them. The better and more noble-minded men of the state are unable to compete with these schemers, and therefore do not offer themselves; hence it most frequently happens that they are not the best men who govern the state. Bold and ambitious fortune-hunters most easily get into office; and once in office, they endeavor to maintain their place by every kind of scheme and trick, as well as by flattering the masses of the people to preserve their popularity. The ignorant people of Europe, who believe that kings and great lords are the cause of all the evils in the world, vote for that man who speaks loudest against the powerful, and who declares himself to be a friend of the people.