When I left Minneapolis, a little more than a week later, I had in mind Mr. Ross’s challenge that any search for work in the interior of the State would discover abundant opportunities. I was bound next, therefore, for the Iowa border. It would not have taken long to reach it at the usual rate of thirty miles a day. But I did not go through directly. For several days I worked for a fine old Irish farmer near Belle Plain, whose family was stanch Roman Catholic, and whose wife was a veritable sister of mercy to the whole country side, indefatigable in ministry to the sick and poor. A few days later I stopped again and spent a memorable week as hired man on Mr. Barton’s farm near Blue Earth City. It was well along in July, therefore, when I crossed into Iowa from the north, walking down by way of Elmore and Ledyard and Bancroft to Algona, where I spent a few days and then set out for Council Bluffs. The walk from Algona to Council Bluffs was a matter of two hundred miles and a little more, perhaps. The heat was intense, but, apart from some discomfort due to that, it was a charming walk, leading on through regions that varied widely but constantly presented new phases of native wealth. I should have enjoyed it more but for the awkwardness of my position. It was embarrassing to meet the farmers, yet I wished to meet all that I could. It was not easy to frame an excuse for not accepting the work that was constantly offered to me. To negotiate with a farmer for the job of helping with the chores in payment for a night’s lodging and breakfast was trying to his temper, when he was at his wit’s end for hands to help at the harvesting. I felt like one spying out the land and mocking its need. Through a long, hot afternoon I walked from Algona in the direction of Humboldt, some twenty-six miles to the south. The country roads were deserted, the whole population being in the hay-fields, apparently. The corn, which was late in the planting, owing to the spring floods, was making now a measured growth of five inches in the day.