How They Built Homes

The state system of collecting delinquent taxes in the past was proUño of school districts in the northern part of the state. Every settler wanted to be in a separate school district, his own house being the school house, hïs wife the teacher and his children the scholars, the expense of building the house and the salary of the teacher being paid by the state. These things are told again in a very readable 'letter to the Grass Lake News, which we republish: "Editor News: Hay is pretty scarce. Farmers have turned out young cattle and colts to graze or hunger. How fast a new country improves. Twenty years ago five men left Waterloo and Grass Lake and went up in the. Grand Traverse región, 40 miles from any inhabitant and homesteaded 160 acres of land each, and each built a log house and formed a school district. The officer hired alternately their chamber as a school room and the wife to teach the school at $600 a year. They taxed speculators' land to pay the same until each of the five families had a grab at the $3,000 so raised. Speculators began to sell their land on account of high taxes and now they have a $6,000 school house' in the neighborhood with 60 scholars. Gilead Atkinson, of Grass Lake, lived in the same vicinity, and although a widower, was king-Re in the woods. Many Grass Lake people remember hirn as a maker. His wife was crazy and died in the poorhouse or Kalamzoo asylum. For the first five years six voters were all there were in a radius of 20 miles and I see the census gives the same territory 10,000 now. Grass Lake then had doublé of its present number of inhabitants. kinson used to teil of his bashfulness and embarrassment at his wedding. He said his wife was robed in white and looked the minister square in the eye without losing her poise in the least at all the dominie's questions, but when it got to him he almost fainted and pulled up his coat and trousers' legs, shivered and turned pale and was so rattled that when the eider asked him to take this vvoman as his lawful wedded wife, Atkinson said, 'Oh, oh, did you speak to me?' That was the last he remembered until he introduced his wife by her maiden name and she scowled at him, but he got bravely over it before he died.