here some lead mines were being worked. We stopped
at a long, low log house with a porch the entire length, and called for
bread and milk, which was soon set before us. The lady was washing and
the man was playing with a child on the porch. The little thing was
trying to walk, the man would swear terribly at it--not in an angry way,
but in a sort of careless, blasphemous style that was terribly shocking.
I thought of the child being reared in the midst of such bad language
and reflected on the kind of people we were meeting in this far away
place. They seemed more wicked and profane the farther west we walked. I
had always lived in a more moral and temperate atmosphere, and I was
learning more of some things in the world than I had ever known before.
I had little to say and much to see and listen to and my early precepts
were not forgotten. No work was to be had here and we set out across the
prairie toward Mineral Point, twenty miles away. When within four miles
of that place we stopped at the house of Daniel Parkinson, a fine
looking two-story building, and after the meal was over Mr. Henry hired
out to him for $16 per month, and went to work that day. I heard of a
job of cutting cordwood six miles away and went after it, for our money
was getting very scarce, but when I reached the place I found a man had
been there half an hour before and secured the job. The proprietor, Mr.
Crow, gave me my dinner which I accepted with many thanks, for it saved
my coin to pay for the next meal. I now went to Mineral Point, and
searched the town over for work. My purse contained thirty-five cents
only and I slept in an unoccupied out house without supper. I bought
crackers and dried beef for ten cents in the morning and made my first
meal since the day before, felt pretty low-spirited. I then went to
Vivian's smelting furnace where they bought lead ore, smelted it, and
run it into pigs of about 70 pounds each. He said he had a job for me if
I could do it. The furnace was propelled by water and they had a small
buzz saw for cutting four-foot wood into blocks about a foot long. These
blocks they wanted split up in pieces about an inch square to mix in
with charcoal in smelting ore. He said he would board me with the other
men, and give me a dollar and a quarter a cord for splitting the wood. I
felt awfully poor, and a stranger, and this was a beginning for me at
any rate, so I went to work with a will and never lost a minute of
daylight