Excerpt from Down on the Ridge: Reminiscences of the Old Days in Coalport and Down on the Ridge; Marion County, Iowa

This little book has not been thrust upon the world to bring the writer into prominence. Such an attempt would and should meet with dismal failure.

Prompted by the memory of the goodly people who were the pioneers of that far off time, and the pride we all feel in the great work they did in the life they lived and the splendid examples left behind to guide succeeding generations, the fond hope that even the coming people in that goodly land down there may know something of the heroes and heroines, the kindly Christian fathers and mothers who played their parts so well in that homeland, that the children and children's children of those early toilers may not forget who planted and harvested and labored and prayed in the struggling days of the olden time, this little book has been given to the interested ones as a memorial of loved ones long since gone to their reward.

In bringing up the scenes of the past and in touching the lives of, and the parts played by these pioneers, the writer, so needful of charity of thought, has dropped the mantle of love over every life and every act and every deed, making up the story of the old world's work in that old community so full of history and love and disappoint ment and joy.

It is altogether proper we should have some kind of a record of this people, their struggles, their service to the world, a word of praise so oft denied when in the midst of life and struggle and toil.

This brief story, though coming from a mind um trained and a hand unskilled, may be the last and only tale of the places, of the people, of the incidents coming in the morning of life, to the boys and girls of fifty years ago, of the vanished hands that so gently led us along the way when life was new, and the old world so strange.

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