ca. I became a member of their society
before spring and would probably have continued a member of this
denomination, if circumstances which were beyond my control, had not
brought me to other fields of action and other surroundings.

This winter passed in a very pleasant manner. In the afternoon I
attended an English school, and in the evening I gave instructions in
English to other young men and women. The friendship of Dr. Ober and his
wife never failed, and many years afterwards I was a welcome guest at
their home in La Crosse, Wis., to which place they had moved from
Moline. Both of them now slumber under the sod, but their many good
deeds shall live for ever.

My father was much pleased with the great west, and he wrote back to the
rest of our family in Sweden to come to this country the next summer,
and in May I started to meet them in Boston. As there were no railroads
to Moline, I took a steamboat to Galena, and thence the stage-coach to
Freeport, and from there to Chicago by rail.

The vessel carrying my mother and the party with her was three months on
the ocean, and there was great scarcity of provisions on board. The ship
at last arrived, in the month of July, and a couple of days later the
whole party, consisting of about two hundred, took the train for the
west, I volunteering as their guide and interpreter. All went well until
about one hundred miles east of Chicago, when the baggage car attached
to our train in front caught fire. It was thought best to try to reach a
station, and the burning train sped on at the rate of sixty miles an
hour. The scene was a frightful one, the cars crammed full of frightened
emigrants, the flames hissing like serpents from car to car, windows
cracking, people screaming, and women fainting, all at the same time
looking to me, who was not yet twenty years of age, for protection and
deliverance.

As soon as possible I placed reliable men as guards at the doors to
prevent the people from rushing out and crowding each other off the
platform. The train did not reach the station but had to be stopped on
the open prairie, where we all were helped out of the cars with no
accident of any kind except every particle of baggage, saving only what
the passengers had in their seats with them, was burnt. In due time
another train brought us to Chicago, where the railroad company
immediately offered to pay all losses as soon as lists of the property
destroyed could be made out and prop