enable me to explain myself, and I soon found that I had left the
steamer several hours too early; that the name of this place was New
London, that another steamer would come past at the same time the next
night, so that all I had to do was to wait for that steamer and go to
Boston on the same ticket.

I spent the day in seeing the city and chatting with my friend, the shoe
maker, and in the evening returned to the wharf to watch for the Boston
steamer.

This being my ague day, I had violent attacks of ague and fever, so that
I was again forced to lie down to rest on the same wooden box, and again
went to sleep. After a while I was aroused by the noise of the
approaching steamer; rushed on board in company with some other
passengers, and considered myself very fortunate when reflecting that I
would surely be in Boston the next morning. I had made myself familiar
with the surroundings during the day, and when the steamer started, I
noticed that it directed its course towards New York, instead of Boston.
I had no money to pay my fare to New York, could neither borrow nor beg,
and so I crawled down in a little hole in the fore part of the steamer,
where the tackles and ropes were kept, thus, fortunately, escaping the
notice of the ticket collector.

The next evening I again embarked for Boston and finally arrived safely
at my destination.

We stayed in Boston several weeks, and during that time my ague caused a
heavy drain on our small treasury. We had no definite plan, did not know
what to do, and as we had never been used to any kind of hard work,
matters began to assume a serious aspect, especially in regard to
myself. But then, as now, the hope of many a young man was the Great
West which, at that time, was comparatively little known even in Boston.
Toward the close of the month of July we, therefore, went to Buffalo,
which was as far as our money would carry us. Here we put up at a cheap
boarding house kept by a Norwegian by name of Larson, with whom we
stopped while trying to get work. But having learned no trade and being
unused to manual labor, we soon found that it was impossible to get a
job in the city; so we left our baggage at the boarding house and
started on foot for a country place named Hamburg, some ten miles
distant, where we learned that two of our late companions across the
ocean had found employment. On the road to Hamburg, about dusk, we
reached a small house by the wayside, where we asked for