Page:Six months in Kansas.djvu/29

Rh fully as you would cream from a pan of milk, until the stir of the mud bade me stop. You should have seen me, mother of mine, squatted on the floor at midnight, comparing those two bowls. I could have cried at the remembrance of all the pebbly-bottomed, clear streams I had left in dear New England. Now, one bowl looked like the mud-cakes we children used to stir with a stick, in broken china, and spread in fancy forms of cakes, pies, and turn-overs, on the cellar window-frame facing the sunny bank of the old house. What had been poured off was a poor edition of the rinsing water which old Rachel used to be so choice of in the tubs standing under the well-sweep.

But the escape from the first condition seemed so great, by comparison, that actual refreshment and rest followed an ablution in the second. To be sure I did dream of wading in dirty water, and working hard to dig a well in a sand-bar; but the morning found me laughing at my unsuccessful labors, and also busy with the preparation to go on board the steamer "Golden State, Capt. John Gonsullis," bound up the Missouri to Kansas