It has always been admitted that during those years the emigrants destined for Minnesota received better care, guidance and protection than was ever accorded to a like class before or after that time. It is also acknowledged that the state received great benefits in return by being settled by a superior class of emigrants from the northern countries. As for my own share in that work, although my efforts were sometimes misunderstood and I myself blamed, as any one will be who has to deal with newly-arrived emigrants, I felt much pride and satisfaction in the work, knowing that not only the state, but the emigrants themselves, and even the serving and laboring classes remaining in the old countries, were very greatly benefited thereby. While laboring hard for immigration to Minnesota my chief object was to get the emigrants away from the large cities and make them settle on the unoccupied lands in the northwest, where the climate was suitable to them, and where it was morally certain that every industrious man or family would acquire independence sooner and better than in the crowded cities of the east. I never attempted to induce anyone to immigrate, but tried to reach those only who had already made up their minds to do so, and the only people that I ever induced to leave their mother country were a number of poor servants and tenants among my own or my parents' acquaintances for whom I myself paid partly or wholly the cost of the journey. CHAPTER IX. Visit to Sweden in 1868-1869--The Object of my Journey--Experiences and Observations During the Same--Difference Between American and Swedish Customs--My Birth-place--Arrival and Visit There--Visit to Christianstad--Visit to Stockholm--The Swedish Parliament--My Return to America--Reflections on and Impressions of the Condition of the Bureaucracy of Sweden. For many years I had desired to revisit the home of my childhood, and in December, 1868, saying good-bye to family and friends, I set out alone on my first visit to Sweden, after an absence of nearly eighteen years. The chief object of the journey was recreation and pleasure; the second object to make the resources of Minnesota better known among the farming and laboring classes, who had made up their minds to emigrate. This visit to the fatherland marked an important era in my life. Being only eighteen years old when I first left it, my impressions were vague and imperfect. Nor had I seen much of that beautiful country until my return in 1868. I shall now endeavor to relate some of those impressions and experiences as faithfully as memory permits, and should I have to record some things that will offend certain classes of my countrymen, I do it with no unfriendliness or lack of kindly feeling, but simply in the interest of truth; for after having been a true and loyal American citizen for nearly forty years I still cling to Sweden, its people and institutions, with the affection of a child toward its mother.