of travel in those days. I worked for him until 1878. They started to build the U.P. from Norfolk to Madison. I helped with that until completed and then returned to the home that sheltered the little drawing card. By that time the Elkhorn and Missouri R.R. was going through, which became the Central and Northwestern of today.

About this time I began to think seriously about a home to settle down in with the Lewis girl. She thought it best for me to take a homestead which I did in the fall of 1878.

I bought Alma Hutchins' right on the homestead that I still own (NW1/4 of 8-23-3). As I was not a subject of the United States I was obliged to make a trip to Madison to procure my intention papers. I could not file on my claim until I had made known that it was my intention to become a citizen of the United States. Not until I had lived here long enough was I able to get my naturalization papers, which I did later on. When I had declared my intention I filed on my claim and paid Alma Hutchins ninety dollars for his right to it, which he had abandoned in grasshopper time. It was Andrew Thatch, now deceased, of Madison who made out the papers.

Now as I had my farm and obliged to live on it at least part of the time, I did as a great many others did in those days, proceeded to build me a dugout. After digging a hole that I thought would make a fair-sized room, I covered it with poles, hay and dirt.

I should have said that after working and saving my earnings the few months I was at Charlie Hutchins, I began to feel that I could afford a better way of travelling than shanks horses, and at the same time take Florence along, so I bought a yoke of steers that were two years old.

Thinking it just the finest place yet to break steers in, no fences, trees or rocks to run into, I took them out on the prairie and turned them loose. The harder I cracked the whip the harder they would go. After becoming accustomed to their yoke (which had been made by a neighbor), I bought my first wagon from Claus Neuwark and a little later, thinking I could afford a better one for Florence to ride in, bought my second from George Tanner, a brother of Dr. Tanner of Battle Creek. It is needless to say that from then on, Florence and I enjoyed many Sunday afternoons on the prairies, and did not have to walk either.

By this time they were pretty well broken, so I hauled the poles from the river for the roof on my dugout picking out some of the choicer for my furniture, and I'll assure you I did not have many idle moments in the days that followed. I bought an old stove from the Hutchins', and as for bedding, I had that shipped from Canada. It consisted of good goose-feathers bed and pillows covered with home-spun linen and all wool counterpanes woven by my grandmother.

Along with all, I worked out every spare day I could get work. Coming home one night at the end of one of my hardest

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