She ran out, with her hands covered with dough, calling the others, and they caught him bodily before he had time to escape.
Here (at Kiskwaukie) we received a visit from a ragged and barefooted, but bright-eyed gentleman, who seemed to be the intellectual loafer, the walking Will's coffee-house, of the place.

He told us many charming snake-stories; among others, of himself having seen seventeen young ones re-enter the mother snake, on the approach of a visitor.
This night we reached Belvidere, a flourishing town in Boon County, where was the tomb, now despoiled, of Big Thunder.

In this later day we felt happy to find a really good hotel.
From this place, by two days of very leisurely and devious journeying, we reached Chicago, and thus ended a journey, which one at least of the party might have wished unending.
I have not been particularly anxious to give the geography of the scene, inasmuch as it seemed to me no route, nor series of stations, but a garden interspersed with cottages, groves, and flowery lawns, through which a stately river ran.

I had no guide-book, kept no diary, do not know how many miles we travelled each day, nor how many in all.
What I got from the journey was the poetic impression of the country at large; it is all I have aimed to communicate.
The narrative might have been made much more interesting, as life was at the time, by many piquant anecdotes and tales drawn from private life.

But here courtesy restrains the pen, for I know those who received the stranger with such frank kindness would feel ill requited by its becoming the means of fixing many spy-glasses, even though the scrutiny might be one of admiring interest, upon their private homes.
For many of these anecdotes, too, I was indebted to a friend, whose property they more lawfully are.