cabin
during this storm. After a couple of weeks we got so used to it that we
finally found our voyage quite endurable. Still we were very glad when
the beautiful steamer Circassian of the Allan Line brought us safely to
shore in Portland, Me. A few days more on rail, and we were again safe
and sound in our dear Minnesota.

CHAPTER XIII.

Grasshopper Ravages in Minnesota--The Presidential Election--Chosen
Presidential Elector--Minnesota _Stats Tidning_--_Svenska Tribunen_ in
Chicago--Farm in Northwestern Minnesota--Journalistic Work.

"The world do move" nowadays, and most emphatically so in the great
American Northwest. An absence of four years is almost enough to bury
one out of sight, at least that is what I found on returning to
Minnesota. The crisis of 1873 had left my finances in anything but a
flourishing condition, to which was added the ravages of the
grasshoppers, which caused considerable losses to me on my farm at
Litchfield, that being about the only property I then owned.

My attention was soon drawn from these private reverses to public
affairs. The first steps toward re-entering the field of politics was my
nomination for presidential elector by the Republican state convention,
held at St. Paul in the summer of 1876. At the request of the Republican
state central committee, I took an active part in the campaign that
followed, as in fact I had done at every previous election since my
residence in this state, but this time I spent the whole autumn in
making a thorough political canvass through most of the Scandinavian
settlements in the state. During that canvass it was my good fortune for
a long time to be associated with the late William Windom, then a United
States senator, and afterward twice secretary of the treasury.

Mr. Windom was at that time in the very prime of his noble manhood; his
fine mental and physical endowments made him an object of love and
veneration among the people. Though a man of the purest character and
exemplary life, he was a pleasant, boon companion, fond of a joke and a
good story, liberal and charitable in his judgment of others, easy and
polite in his manners, open-hearted and kind toward all. He was a large,
broad-shouldered man, weighing over two hundred pounds, with a high
forehead, dark eyes, and smoothly shaved face. As a speaker he was
earnest, though quiet, fluent and humorous. He never used tobacco or
spirits in any form. We traveled together in all