It is strange how easily people in the course of time get used even to the most unpleasant circumstances. This was illustrated in a striking manner by the few cabin passengers who sat packed together in the cabin during this storm. After a couple of weeks we got so used to it that we finally found our voyage quite endurable. Still we were very glad when the beautiful steamer Circassian of the Allan Line brought us safely to shore in Portland, Me. A few days more on rail, and we were again safe and sound in our dear Minnesota. CHAPTER XIII. Grasshopper Ravages in Minnesota--The Presidential Election--Chosen Presidential Elector--Minnesota _Stats Tidning_--_Svenska Tribunen_ in Chicago--Farm in Northwestern Minnesota--Journalistic Work. "The world do move" nowadays, and most emphatically so in the great American Northwest. An absence of four years is almost enough to bury one out of sight, at least that is what I found on returning to Minnesota. The crisis of 1873 had left my finances in anything but a flourishing condition, to which was added the ravages of the grasshoppers, which caused considerable losses to me on my farm at Litchfield, that being about the only property I then owned. My attention was soon drawn from these private reverses to public affairs. The first steps toward re-entering the field of politics was my nomination for presidential elector by the Republican state convention, held at St. Paul in the summer of 1876. At the request of the Republican state central committee, I took an active part in the campaign that followed, as in fact I had done at every previous election since my residence in this state, but this time I spent the whole autumn in making a thorough political canvass through most of the Scandinavian settlements in the state. During that canvass it was my good fortune for a long time to be associated with the late William Windom, then a United States senator, and afterward twice secretary of the treasury.