with his six dollars a week. A couple of years
later he became the partner of his employer.

CHAPTER III.

The Arrival of my Father and Brother--Journey to Illinois--Work on a
Railroad--The Ague--Doctor Ober--Religious Impressions--The Arrival of
my Mother, Sister and her Husband--A Burning Railroad Train--We go to
Minnesota--Our Experience as Wood Choppers and Pioneers.

Finally my father and brother arrived, and again I turned my course
westwards in company with them and their friends. We traveled by rail to
Buffalo and across the lake to Toledo, thence by rail again to Chicago.
In the summer of 1852 there were no railroads west of Chicago, and our
company had to take passage on a canal-boat drawn by horses to La Salle,
and from this place we rode in farmers wagons to Andover and Galesburg.
The country around there was as yet only in the first stages of
development; there was very little money in circulation, and no demand
for farm products. The immigrants suffered a great deal from fever and
other climatic diseases.

My brother who was nearly sixteen years old soon obtained steady work
from an American farmer, while my father and I had to do different kinds
of work, such as building fences, stacking grain, etc. The only pay we
could get was checks on some store. I remember what an abundance of
provisions there was in that locality, and nobody seemed to be in need.

A farmer near Galesburg, for whom I worked a week, had so many hens and
chickens and eggs, that when people came out from town to buy eggs, they
were told to pay ten cents, go out to the barn and fill their baskets
with freshly-laid eggs, no matter how big the basket. Beef and pork had
scarcely any value, and anybody could go into a cornfield that fall and
gather a crop on half shares.

There was much religious interest among the Swedes in Illinois at that
time. The Methodists and Lutherans were already building churches, and
held services side by side in many of the towns and settlements,
although they numbered only a few families yet. I remember distinctly
one Sunday attending service in a Methodist church listening to an
eloquent preacher, taking for his text "The Broad and the Narrow Ways."
He depicted both in glowing language, and wound up with the following
words, pronounced in a broad (Swedish) dialect: "My dear brethren, I
have now shown you the two ways, and you may take which ever you like;
that is all the same to me."

My