The Busy Life of Eighty-Five Years of Ezra Meeker

Just why I should write a preface I know not, except that it is fashionable to do so, and yet in the present case there would seem a little explanation due the reader, who may cast his eye on the first chapter of this work. Indeed, the chapter, "Early Days in Indiana," may properly be termed an introduction, though quite intimately connected with the narrative that follows, yet not necessary to make a completed story of the trip to Oregon in the early fifties. The enlarged scope of this work, narrating incidents not connected with the Oregon Trail or the Ox Team expedition, may call for this explanation, that the author's thought has been to portray frontier life in the Old Oregon Country, as well as pioneer life on the plains; to live his experiences of eighty-five years over again, and tell them in plain, homely language, to the end the later generation may know how the "fathers" lived, what they did, and what they thought in the long ago. An attempt has been made to teach the young lessons of industry, frugality, upright and altruistic living as exemplified in the lives of the pioneers. While acknowledging the imperfections of the work, yet to parents I can sincerely say they may safely place this volume in the home without fear that the adventures recited will arouse a morbid craving in the minds of their children. The adventures are of real life, and incident to a serious purpose in life, and not stories of fancy to make exciting reading, although some of them may seem as such. "Truth is stranger than fiction," and the pioneers have no need to borrow from their imagination. Seattle, Washington.