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By Root 1597 0

to warm that interior at all, and a mug of water placed next to it froze as quickly as though it were standing out of doors. We all retired to our quilts early in the evening, shortly after sunset, and it was the rankest cruelty to be called out of them for any reason. As the nights progressed, however, it quickly became apparent that the largest stack of quilts wasn’t insulation enough for sleeping on the ground, outdoors or in, and Thomas and I began looking around for another place to stay. We discussed returning to our claim, but as the snow continued to fall, that got farther and farther away. Soon there was no question of such a thing; it was cold in Lawrence, but there was plenty of food to be had: not only pork and beef and venison, prairie chicken, turkey, rabbits, and squirrels, but apples of two or three different varieties, both green and red, pumpkins, other squashes, and sweet potatoes. Mr. Stearns had stacks of sealed cans of oysters from far away, and there was, of course, corn flour and meal, wheat flour, lard, salt, sugar, honey, and maple sugar, almost everything, for a price, except eggs, which froze in the cold, and butter. But in Lawrence we really didn’t need eggs—the water was so full of lime that it leavened any cakes and made them light and delicious.

We moved for a time into the Free State Hotel, right beside the Woods’ cabin, where we ladies had made cartridges. The Free State Hotel was famous, and meant to be so. Not only did it stand four stories of stone, but it had round, fortress-like windows in the fourth story, which the Missourians viewed as designed for defense, if not, indeed, for aggression. Governor Robinson, General Lane, and the others had made the Free State Hotel their headquarters during the "war." It was a large, imposing building, and the Missourians considered it just another way that the people of Lawrence were attempting to lord it over everyone else. In spite of its importance, though, and the money that had been spent on its building, winter had obstructed the completion of its interior—one reached all four stories by way of a staircase made of rickety boards, through which you could see all the way to the cellar, if you dared to look down. I did not, but climbed as close to the wall as I could, holding on to the carved banister that had been installed before the stairs and planning how I would catch myself if the steps gave way. But they never did so, even under the burden of the sickly and feverish men and women who were carried up and down on pallets.

While we were installed at the hotel, the constitution that had been written at the Topeka convention came up for a vote. What with the "war" and the weather, I don’t suppose that as many people in K.T. had a chance to read it as the Free Staters had hoped, but the voting in Lawrence was heavy, and all our friends cast their ballots. Elsewhere, the Missourians got up to their usual tricks. One man told us, and he a reporter for some eastern newspaper, that at Leavenworth he had witnessed the Missourians coming in boatloads to our Kansas election. Kansas elections had been overrun by Missourians every time before, and so, I suppose, this was what the elections officials expected, but the Missourians had other ideas: once enough of them got there, they stole the ballot box! One man tried to hide the box under a table and then run away; he was caught outside the store where they were voting and beaten with clubs! A Missourian with an ax raised it over his head to strike, and only was prevented by being unable to get in a clear blow! After that, the Missourians got the ballot box and took it away, and the Free Staters, who weren’t as well armed as we are in Lawrence, didn’t dare to go after it. There was tremendous gloating on the part of the Missourians, especially as the evening progressed and they got deeper into whatever barrels of highly rectified whiskey they could find to warm themselves up. They also threatened, loudly and clearly, to destroy the presses and the office of the Free State paper there, the Register,