Early in September I went west and having put myself in the hands of the
State Central Committee of Iowa, entered the field, campaigning in the
interests of the People's Party. For six weeks I travelled, speaking
nearly every day--getting back to the farms of the west and harvesting a
rich fund of experiences.

It was delightful autumn weather, and in central Iowa the crops were
fairly abundant. On every hand fields of corn covered the gentle hills
like wide rugs of lavender velvet, and the odor of melons and ripening
leaves filled the air. Nature's songs of cheer and abundance (uttered by
innumerable insects) set forth the monstrous injustice of man's law by
way of contrast. Why should children cry for food in our cities whilst
fruits rotted on the vines and wheat had no value to the harvester?

With other eager young reformers, I rode across the odorous prairie
swells, journeying from one meeting place to another, feeling as my
companions did that something grandly beneficial was about to be enacted
into law. In this spirit I spoke at Populist picnics, standing beneath
great oaks, surrounded by men and women, work-worn like my own father
and mother, shadowed by the same cloud of dismay. I smothered in small
halls situated over saloons and livery stables, travelling by
freight-train at night in order to ride in triumph as "Orator of the
Day" at some county fair, until at last I lost all sense of being the
writer and recluse.

As I went north my indignation burned brighter, for the discontent of
the people had been sharpened by the drought which had again cut short
the crop. At Millbank, Cyrus, one of my old Dry Run neighbors, met me.
He was now a grave, stooping middle-aged man also in the midst of
disillusionment. "Going west" had been a mistake for him as for my
father--"But here we are," he said, "and I see nothing for it but to
stick to the job."

Mother and father came to Aberdeen to hear me speak, and as I looked
down on them from the platform of the opera house, I detected on their
faces an expression which was not so much attention, as preoccupation.
They were not listening to my words, they were thinking of my
relationship to them, of the mystery involved in my being there on the
platform surrounded by the men of the county whom they most respected.
They could not take my theories seriously, but they did value and to the
full, the honor which their neighbors paid me--their son! Their presence
so affected