I sympathized in some degree with my father's new design.
There was something large and fine in the business of wheat-growing, and
to have a plague of insects arise just as our harvesting machinery was
reaching such perfection that we could handle our entire crop without
hired help, was a tragic, abominable injustice. I could not blame him
for his resentment and dismay.

My personal plans were now confused and wavering. I had no intention of
joining this westward march; on the contrary, I was looking toward
employment as a teacher, therefore my last weeks at the Seminary were
shadowed by a cloud of uncertainty and vague alarm. It seemed a time of
change, and immense, far-reaching, portentous readjustment. Our
homestead was sold, my world was broken up. "What am I to do?" was my
question.

Father had settled upon Ordway, Brown County, South Dakota, as his
future home, and immediately after my graduation, he and my brother set
forth into the new country to prepare the way for the family's removal,
leaving me to go ahead with the harvest alone. It fell out, therefore,
that immediately after my flowery oration on _Going West_ I found myself
more of a slave to the cattle than ever before in my life.

Help was scarce; I could not secure even so much as a boy to aid in
milking the cows; I was obliged to work double time in order to set up
the sheaves of barley which were in danger of mouldering on the wet
ground. I worked with a kind of bitter, desperate pleasure, saying,
"This is the last time I shall ever lift a bundle of this accursed
stuff."

And then, to make the situation worse, in raising some heavy machinery
connected with the self-binder, I strained my side so seriously that I
was unable to walk. This brought the harvesting to a stand, and made my
father's return necessary. For several weeks I hobbled about, bent like
a gnome, and so helped to reap what the chinch bugs had left, while my
mother prepared to "follow the sunset" with her "Boss."

September first was the day set for saying good-bye to Dry Run, and it
so happened that her wedding anniversary fell close upon the same date
and our neighbors, having quietly passed the word around, came together
one Sunday afternoon to combine a farewell dinner with a Silver Wedding
"surprise party."

Mother saw nothing strange in the coming of the first two carriages, the
Buttons often came driving in that way,--but when the Babcocks, the
Coles, and the Gilchrists cla