The abundant vitality of Dr. Eggleston’s later years has been so strikingly characteristic that it is difficult to believe that ill health followed him from semi-invalid boyhood into manhood; but the year after his return from Virginia he was sent to Minnesota in the hope that the change might benefit him, and the kind fates thus threw him into still other and different experiences. He was in the new Northwest when the free-soil excitement in Kansas thrilled the country, and he set out afoot, with a dirk knife as his only weapon, for the scene of conflict. He has himself described the failure and result of this excursion:-- “After weeks of weary walking and nights spent in the discomforts of frontier cabins, I grew sick at heart and longed for the companionship and refinements of home. I was rather glad to learn that men from the free States were entirely shut out of the besieged territory on the Iowa side. My moccasins were worn out, my feet were sore, my little stock of money was failing, and I was tired of husbanding it by eating crackers and cheese. I turned eastward at a point west of Cedar Falls, crossed the Mississippi at Muscatine, and after walking in all three or four hundred miles, I at length boarded a railway train at a station near Galesburg, and reached my nearest relatives after an enforced fast of twenty-four hours, without a cent in my pocket, and looking, in my soiled and travel-worn garments, like a young border ruffian. I had left home a pale invalid; I returned sun-browned and well.”