In America the humblest citizen goes to a local, state, or United States official with head erect and demands that such and such things be done, according to the law. In the other countries the lowly and even the average individual comes before the magistrate cringing and supplicating for his rights as for a favor. Of course such a false and absurd system, practiced for hundreds of years, can not fail to leave a strong impression both upon the seekers and the granters of such favors. To me, brought up, ever since my boyhood, under the American system, the importance of the civil officers in Sweden seemed to be greatly at variance with the progress made in the elevation of the people in general. I will only take one example: The provincial governor (Landshöfding) and his immediate subordinates of a little province of the size of half a dozen of our counties, appears with much more pomp and style than any of the governors of our great states; and I have no doubt that such a governor considers his office to be more important than that of the governors of some of our states, each of which has a population larger than that of the smaller kingdoms of Europe. CHAPTER X. The Importance of the Scandinavian Element--A Swede Elected Secretary of State in Minnesota--False Rumors of Indian Depredations--The Northern Pacific Railroad is Built--Trip to Philadelphia--The National Convention at Indianapolis--Delegation to Washington--A Swedish Colony in Mississippi Moved to Minnesota--The Second Voyage to Europe. Politically the Scandinavians in America had exerted no particular influence beyond that they had generally been counted upon as loyal to the Republican party, and a few of them had held county offices and been members of the state legislatures in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The honor of first bringing out a Scandinavian for a state office belongs to F. S. Christensen, a young Dane, who, in the summer of 1869, was editor of _Nordisk Folkeblad_ in Rochester, Minn. One day he called on me and asked if I would be candidate for secretary of state, providing the Scandinavians of Minnesota should nominate me, to which I readily assented. A few weeks later a Scandinavian convention was held in Minneapolis and resulted in designating me as their choice for secretary of state. At the Republican state convention held in St. Paul in September that year, I was nominated almost unanimously by the whole Republican party. Being called to the platform after the nomination, I accepted the same in a brief speech, which at the time attracted much attention as echoing the sentiments of our people in the west. I therefore regard it of sufficient importance to quote it here: "_Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention_: