relates that on one evening, after a prisoner's conviction, the judge played the fiddle and said prisoner danced for the amusement of the company.

When the new town was scarcely twelve weeks old, there dashed into its midst one day a gay cavalcade, led by the blue-coated figure of His Excellency Governor Robert Lucas, white-haired and stately on his bay pacer, with his daughter and niece and General Fletcher all intent on seeing the seat of government. The logs of rising cabins rested as the work

men came out to pay their homage to the distinguished visitors. The best cabin in the town, the only one with an attic, was placed at their disposal, and that night the governor went to his slumbers by the primitive ladder against a narrow hatchway in the upper floor.

The father of Governor Lucas was a descendant of William Penn, and a captain in the continental army of the revolution; and this son Robert was born in 1781, about the time of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, in a low-roofed old homestead on the Potomac about fifty miles from the home of Washington. The year following Washington's death, when Robert was a youth of nineteen, the family removed to the wilds of

Ohio, where he surveyed Scioto county, a town of which still bears his name. He was a captain in 1812, and guided Hull's army through the woods to Detroit. Lucas county, in northern Ohio, was also named in his honor. He served in the Ohio general assembly in its old Chillicothe days, and removed with that body to Columbus in 1816, when the new halls of state were warmed by cozy fires in huge old-fashioned fire-places, with big brass andirons, and when stumps and logs still obstructed the streets of Ohio's capital city. For nineteen successive years Robert Lucas had presided in one or the other branch of the Ohio legislature, and in 1832 was elected Ohio's governor. Having served two terms he declined a third, and retired to private life, and was soon appointed by President Van Buren to the government of the newly organized territory of Iowa. And here we find the old hero inspecting his new domain, walking along the sod-paved avenues, scattering the leaves with a cane which tells this story of its own:

Presented by Judge Overton, of Tennessee, to Governor Lucas, of Ohio, for presiding over the First Democratic National Convention, nominating Andrew Jackson to the Presidency, Baltimore, Maryland, 1832.

"Somewhat back from the village street,
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat"

that Governor Lucas erected in that early time, and children and grandchildren perpetuate the name of the first territorial governor of Iowa.

A contract having been made with the firm that built the capitol of Illinois at Springfield, to construct a similar structure at Iowa city, a large force had accomplished by July 4, 1840, ten thousand dollars' worth of work on the foundation, therefore the corner-stone of the edifice illustrated was laid amid the booming of guns and the waving of pioneer hats. Governor Lucas addressed the assemblage. The celebration of the day closed with a barbecue under the forest trees, in what is now the city park.

From the "Old Capitol Quarry," till then untouched, save in the crude age of Indian art, stone was cut and hauled to the top of Capitol square, where busy workmen piqued the curiosity of the squirrel above and the lurking red man below, with the steady click of hammer and chisel. Slightly varying from the original plan by Father Mazzuchelli, the blocks of gray limestone shaped themselves in Doric symmetry, aspiring columns rose on the porticos, and the dome curved its fair calyx above the oaks of ages. No costly wood carving or pillars of marble graced the primitive capitol. The great Wisconsin pineries were not yet opened the interior was finished with Alleghany pine, the floors were of

native oak, and the shingles were bought in Cincinnati. All this, however, was not done in a day, nor in a year. The stress of poverty that hampers all new states was heavily felt in Iowa; droughts and floods, financial crises, and cholera kept the exchequer low. Delay followed delay, so that the rear portico stands unfinished to this day.

In cold wind and icy sleet the first legislature assembled in Iowa city, just thirty months after it was founded, and met a cordial welcome in the busy little town of seven hundred people. No railroad brought them to the seat of government but the tedious lumbering coach, or the solitary

horseman threaded his lonely way in the face of a fierce December storm. As the capitol was yet unfinished the first legislators occupied a temporary frame structure erected by a public-spirited citizen for the purpose; was decorated by the patriotic ladies and furnished with the outfit sent on from Burlington, the temporary seat of government.

The second governor, John Chambers, a Kentuckian, came with this legislature. He had been an aide of General Harrison, and of great service in the presidential campaign of 1840. President Harrison remembered him immediately after his inauguration with this appointment to govern Iowa. He brought from his plantation a colored body-servant, and his secretary to be in fashion purchased a bright mulatto boy in town for

two hundred and fifty dollars. That boy, the only human being ever sold in Iowa city if not in the state, afterward died in southern bondage.

One day the little isolated world of pioneers heard a puffing in the river, and lo! the pennon of a Mississippi steamer fluttered back of the capitol. The delighted inhabitants honored the captain and crew with a public dinner, and the boat carried back to Burlington twenty thousand pounds of fossil sponges and corals, the deposits of which have since lured even Agassiz himself to the banks of the Iowa.

Soon afterward another steamer came, "converting the deep black waters of the Iowa into foam of milky whiteness," as expressed by an editor of that day. "On the further bluff, withdrawn timidly from the presence of the white man and seated in dismal silence, a small group of the natives of the forest regarded with astonishment and awe the approach of the big fire-canoe, believing it to be a curse of the Great Spirit, marking the progress of the pale-face feeding upon their own loved Iowa."

Down the terrace back of the capitol nearly half the town flocked, greeting the arrival with enthusiastic cheers, but the fond hope that tonnage from Cincinnati could be landed in the heart of Iowa was doomed to disappointment. Still, for many years, occasional steamers continued to ruffle" the deep black waters of the Iowa."

One bright June day in 1842 business was suspended, and the cornerstone was laid of the first academy of the future Athens of Iowa. The Mechanics' Academy was for a long time the finest school edifice in the territory. Here the young people of the forties studied Latin and geometry, here men who are the leading orators in the state to-day plumed their callow wings, and here a boyish band of cadets of temperance foreshadowed prohibition in Iowa. Through some failure in the grant, the property reverted to the state, and is now Mercy Hospital, connected with the medical college.

The annals of the west afford no parallel to the Hummer Bell. Rey. Michael Hummer was pastor of the Presbyterian church in 1841, and through his solicitation a beautiful bell had been presented by the Troy foundry and friends in the east. Upon it was inscribed the names of the donors and the church for which it was cast. Rev. Mr. Hummer had a falling out with his people and left. The citizens all felt a pride in this bell, as it was the only one in the capital, and, in fact, the only one whose chimes had broken upon the Sabbath air in all that region west of the Mississippi towns. Great, then, was the indignation when it was rumored one morning that Rev. Mr. Hummer had come back and was going to take the bell to his new field at Keokuk. The people rallied to the church. Mr.

Hummer had climbed into the belfry, and with the aid of an accomplice had let the bell down. At this interesting juncture the citizens arrived, and coolly removed the ladder, leaving the gentleman and his friend up in the belfry. While loading the bell into a wagon, sticks and stones and lath and plaster were showered down from above, but the indignant people carried the trophy away, and a trusted few sent it to the bottom of Iowa river, to remain until the disputes could be settled. All day long the prisoners pined in the belfry, but after dark a good Methodist brother took pity on them and let them down. Court was in session at the time, and Hon. John P. Cook, then a rising young sprig of the law, perpetrated the following impromptu verse, to the delight of his legal associates : "Ah, Hummer's bell! Ah, Hummer's bell!

How many a tale of woe 'twould tell,

Of Hummer riding up to town,

To take the brazen jewel down;

And when high up in his belfree,
They moved the ladder; yes, sir-e-e!
Thus while he towered aloft, they say,

The bell took wings and flew away."

Three other stanzas were added by the embryo judge, Wm. H. Tuthill, and the words were set to music. In a few days the whole town was ringing with the song,

"Hummer's Bell! Ah, Hummer's Bell!"

Nothing, down to the days of "John Brown's Body," ever attained such sudden and lasting popularity.

A traitor in the chosen few played the city false, for when they came to look for the bell in the river it was not found. Nearly a generation after a returned Californian reported that the bell was in Salt Lake city, whither it had been spirited away (hauled overland) and sold to the Mormons. A letter to Brigham Young brought back word that it was there, and Iowa city could have it by refunding the money paid for it. Hummer heard of it, and journeying to Salt Lake city found the bell in the school-house for Brigham Young's children, and engaged a lawyer to take it by replevin; but Brigham was awake, and when by night they reached the belfry, lo, the bell again had flown! I would like to add that it was finally returned and hung in triumph in its old place where it tolls to-day as cherished as any old bell of Rotterdam or Ghent, but truth compels the statement that Iowa city did not choose to pay seven hundred dollars for a mere sentiment, and therefore the bell rests from its travels in a museum in Salt Lake city. As early as 1848 the railroad question was agitated in Iowa city. In