Kentucky (blue-grass is not, strictly speaking, blue enough to figure in the national colors, but the author has taken out a poetic license which does not expire for over a year yet, and he therefore under its permission is allowed a certain amount of idiocy) showed that the fields had never forgotten their loyalty to the national colors. Peace under greatly changed conditions resumed her vocations, and, in the language of the poet,—
"There were domes of white blossoms where swelled the white tent;
There were ploughs in the track where the war-wagons went;
There were songs where they lifted up Rachel's lament."
October 8, 1871, occurred the great fire in Chicago, raging for forty-eight hours and devastating three thousand acres of the city. Twenty-five thousand buildings were burned, and two hundred million dollars' worth of property. One hundred thousand people lost their houses, and over seven and one-half millions of dollars were raised for those who needed it, all parts of the world uniting to improve the joyful opportunity to do good, without a doubt of its hearty appreciation.
Boston also had a seventy-million dollar fire in the heart of the wholesale trade, covering sixty acres; and in the prairie and woods fires of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, many people
