I had come 1,500 miles as a wage-earner, and I had 1,500 yet to go before I should reach the Pacific, but not yet had it been hard to find work of some sort, except when I chose to stay in a crowded city in winter. The anxiety that I felt in this instance proved groundless, for when, in the cool of the evening, I looked for employment I found it at the third application, and I went to bed that night a hostler in a livery-stable at a wage of twenty dollars a month and board at a “Fifth Avenue” hotel. Ten dollars less twelve cents, which were due for the hire of books at a stationer’s shop, were clear gain at the end of two weeks’ service in the stable. But the necessity of writing up notes and of answering many letters, besides the allurements of a public library, kept me for several days in Omaha, so that my cash had dwindled, when, one afternoon about the middle of August, I left the city, with the broad State of Nebraska as the next step of the journey. It was natural to follow the Union Pacific Railway. It takes its course westward through the State, and is paralleled by a main-travelled road that connects the frequent settlements along the line. Just out of Omaha the railroad makes a southern bend, and I avoided this by following the directer course of the highway that led next morning to a meeting with the rails at Elkhorn. The going there was of the plainest. The railway followed the northern bank of the Platte River and the road followed the rail. If the day was wet, I left the road and walked the sleepers; if the day was dry, I walked the road, but always I was within easy hail of a lift, and so fell in with many an interesting farmer and was saved many miles of walking. It was late in the afternoon of a rainy day that there chanced a lift of the most timely. From low, heavy clouds had been falling since early morning a misty rain that almost floated in the warm, still air. For a hundred yards together I might find a tolerable path along the turf at the edge of the road. Then, as the mud grew deeper, I took to the rails and kept them, until the monotony of the sleepers drove me to the mire again. I had seen scarcely a soul that day except the fleeting figures on the trains and an occasional bedraggled section-hand who looked sullenly at me, barely deigning a salutation as I passed. It seemed hardly worth while to be abroad, but I had found it generally best to stick to the road when I could, and I was beginning now to think of a shelter for the night and trying to find some satisfaction in having covered more than twenty miles since morning.