Some time it will be found precious. Write it, grandpa, for
my sake! We can make a wonderful story of it."
"We?" I said.
"You, I mean, of course," she replied; "but, if you really want me to do
it, I will type it for you, and maybe do a little editing. Maybe you'll
let me do a little footnote once in a while, so my name will go into it
with yours. I'd be awfully proud, grandpa."
"It'll take a lot of time," I said.
"And you can spare the time as well as not," she answered.
"You all think because I don't go into the field with a team any more,"
I objected, "that I don't amount to anything on the farm; but I tell you
that what I do in the way of chores and planning, practically amounts to
a man's work."
"Of course it does," she admitted, though between you and me it wasn't
so. "But any man can do the chores, and the planning you can do
still--and nobody can write the History of Vandemark Township but
Jacobus Teunis Vandemark. You owe it to the West, and to the world."
So, here I begin the second time. I have been bothered up to now by
feeling that I have not been making much progress; but now there will
be no need for me to skip anything. I begin, just as that canvassing
rascal said, a long way from Vandemark Township, and many years ago in
point of time; but I am afloat with my prow toward the setting sun on
that wonderful ribbon of water which led to the West. I was caught in
the current. Nobody could live along the Erie Canal in those days
without feeling the suck of the forests, and catching a breath now and
then of the prairie winds.
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