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HISTORY OF MADISON.
               CHAPTER IX.
        MERCHANTS AND BANKERS.
  GREAT changes have come since Madison was set-
tled by four housekeepers, who procured supplies from
the peddler's cart and the post office store. There
were bright fellows in the settlement, but they dis-
pensed with much that we deem essential. Tom Jack-
son, the Scotchman, whose whip-saw cut lumber for the
capitol, before Wheeler was ready, was almost a man-
ufactory. Tom illustrated the possibility of doing
without indispensables, but not as they do in somie
parts of Scotland. His old log house was on fire, and
the last glass had dulled his wits. Tumbling out of
bed, Tom, who was called Jack for brevity, pushed
his lower limbs through the sleeves of his jacket, and
with many an adjective declared that " some fellow
had cut off the legs of his pantaloons." The better
appliances of life were more remote than the seedy
unmentionables of Tom Jackson. Everything was in
the rough. The park was the forest primeval. Prai-
rie fires annually crossed from marsh to marsh. Game
was abundant. Prairie chickens and quail were shot
in the village, where bears, wolves and deer were not
strangers. Many years later Col. Bird's hotel stood
in an unbroken forest, and trees that now ornament
t24