Together we hauled lumber from the river for my first
little house.

If we first settlers in Iowa had possessed the sense the Lord gives to
most, we could have built better and warmer, and prettier houses than
the ones we put up, of the prairie sod which we ripped up in long black
ribbons of earth; but we all were from lands of forests, and it took a
generation to teach our prairie pioneers that a sod house is a good
house. I never saw any until the last of Iowa was settling up, out in
the northwestern part of the state, in Lyon, Sioux and Clay Counties.

All that summer, every wagon and draught animal in Monterey County was
engaged in hauling lumber--some of it such poor stuff as basswood sawed
in little sawmills along the rivers; and it was not until in the
'eighties that the popular song, _The Little Old Sod Shanty on the
Claim_ proved two things--that the American pioneer had learned to build
with something besides timber, and that the Homestead Law had come into
effect. What Magnus and I were doing, all the settlers on the Monterey
County farms were doing--raising sod corn and potatoes and buckwheat
and turnips, preparing shelter for the winter, and wondering what they
would do for fuel. Magnus helped me and I helped him.

A lot is said nowadays about the Americanization of the foreigner; but
the only thing that will do the thing is to work with the foreigner, as
I worked with Magnus--let him help me, and be active in helping him. The
Americanization motto is, "Look upon the foreigner as an equal. Help
him. Let him help you. Make each other's problems mutual problems--and
then he is no longer a foreigner." When Magnus Thorkelson came back on
foot across the prairie from Monterey Centre, to lay his hand on the
head of that weeping boy alone on the prairie, and to offer to live with
him and help him, his English was good enough for me, and to me he was
as fully naturalized as if all the judges in the world had made him lift
his hand while he swore to support the Constitution of the United States
and of the State of Iowa. He was a good enough American for Jacobus
Teunis Vandemark.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PLOW WEDS THE SOD

The next day was a wedding-day--the marriage morning of the plow and the
sod. It marked the beginning of the subdual of that wonderful wild
prairie of Vandemark Township and the Vandemark farm. No more fruitful
espousal ever took place than that--when the polished steel of my new
breaking plow