One of these "blue" ones said to Father soon after their arrival: "Do you suppose you will ever get your money back which you loaned us for our passage?" "That," replied father, "I do not know. But this I do know, that now I have no money either to take myself or any of you back again." "Then," rejoined the first one, "if now I could stand on the highway where we started, even with nothing but a shirt on my back, I should be the happiest man alive." Another said: "There is not even grass here such as one can cut with a scythe and, as for land I shall have none of it." And in his case it became so. He never homesteaded and later worked at his trade in Yankton and Sioux City, where he died many years later. Father tried to take a brighter view and to cheer those complaining ones and said to Iver Sneve, who had just expressed the wish to be back on the old sod: "In three years you will be butchering your own pork, raised on your farm in this new land." Then Iver broke out into his characteristically loud, uproarious laughter, full of incredulity and almost scorn, and said: "Berhaug Rise, I have up till this time considered you a man of sense and good judgment, but now I am compelled to believe that your mind's eye is shimmering. I cannot even _keep alive_ for _three years_ in this man-consuming wilderness. Unless some one takes pity on me and helps me to return home, the flies and mosquitoes alone will have finished me before that time. Oh, that some of us older men could have had sense enough to return even when we were as far as England," he added. This is a sample of many conversations, and these expressions were by no means uttered as jokes either. Nevertheless, this Iver Sneve lived some 35 years after this conversation and was worth $25,000.00 when he died. However, these people were here and, with all bridges burned behind them, they realized that mere lamentations would not meet the situation. Something must be done to live and to keep their families, here or in the old country, as was the case with some, alive. So in a few days a party of the younger men set out afoot toward the present site of Parker to seek work on the railroad which was just being extended from that point westward toward Mitchell. They found work with shovel and pick. But ten hours a day, in the hot sun and with an Irish boss over them to see that these implements kept constantly moving, was no soft initiation for these fair skinned men just out of a much colder climate. However, with true Norse and immigrant grit they "stuck it out" and earned a little money before the first winter of 1880-1 came on.