on: "Thanks for all you have related and
promised! Now I am ready to die! Farewell! God bless you all!" after
which he breathed his last. The following spring his family accompanied
me to Minnesota.

I decided to spend New Year's eve with one of my most intimate boyhood
friends, Mr. Nils Bengtson, in the little village of Skogloesa, where I
was born. Some of the dearest friends of my parents and a number of my
childhood acquaintances were present there, and on New Year's day we
attended services together in the old church at Oennestad. My presence
was expected, and the church was crowded with people who had been
friends and neighbors of my parents, or school and playmates of myself.
Even the pastor had chosen a text applicable to me: "I think of the
bygone days, and of the time that is past." The solemn services made a
deep impression on all of us. A day or two later, in company with some
friends I visited the little cottage where I was born, and where a
number of the neighbors had now gathered to see me. One of my earliest
recollections from childhood was the spruce tree, which, as I mentioned
in the first chapter, was planted in the little garden by my parents. It
was the only tree of its kind for a great distance around. It had grown
to be a foot in diameter, was very beautiful, and was the pride not only
of the present owner of the little farm, but of the whole neighborhood.
After breaking off a sprig or two of the tree to carry back to my
parents, we left the place early in the evening for Nils Bengtson's
home, which was about half a mile distant, and where I was still a
guest.

Early the next morning my host awoke me with the news that the owner of
the cottage had arrived before daylight, anxious to communicate a
strange accident. Upon being admitted he stated that shortly after I
left his house in the evening, a single gust of wind swept by in great
force and broke the spruce tree off with a clean cut a few feet from
the ground. It seemed very strange to us all, and he regarded it as an
ill-omen, sold the place shortly afterward, and went with me to America
the following spring.

At that time only a few Swedish emigrants had returned from America, and
to see a man who had been eighteen years in America, and had been a
colonel in the American army must have been a great curiosity,
especially to the country people; for wherever it was known that I would
pass, people flocked from their houses to the roads and str