Excerpt from The Illini: A Story of the Prairies Availing himself of the license usually accorded a writer of fic tion, the author has created situations in which he makes real characters appear, with the purpose of placing those characters more vividly before the reader than would have been possible had he confined himself, as must the historian, to a narrative of events and incidents as they actually occurred. He hopes, however, that these are so set forth that the reader will have little difliculty in distinguishing between those that are real and those that are created to make his purpose more effective. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.