After quitting college, Allan and I occasionally ran across each other, but the last meeting before this, occurred in 1876 on Arch Street, Philadelphia. He was interested in an exhibit in the great exposition, and being then in a great hurry made an appointment to meet me next morning. I kept the engagement, but he was not there. I knew urgent business had turned up to prevent him, and after I returned to my home I received his letter saying so, and appointing another hour. This letter had missed me at my hotel and followed me to Illinois. Here then, we were having our reunion sixteen years after it was due. But now we could make up for lost time for neither had engagements that required attention for a week at least. It was speedily arranged that Allan should accompany me and that we should carry out together the plan I had proposed for myself. He wrote a note for his boarding house keeper in Excelsior, saying he would be gone some days, and gave it to a rowing party going to Excelsior, that we shortly after fell in with, and who cheerfully consented to deliver it. The wind was still from the southeast, but light and we slowly sailed westerly and south-westerly passing successively the state fruit farm and Sampson’s place lying on our left, and Spring Park on our right, had in a short time reached Howard’s Point that juts a third of a mile into the lake from the south shore. We sailed through the strait between this and picturesque Rockwell’s Island with its attractive summer hotel, and restful looking surroundings, and turned southwest toward Smithtown Bay. We entered Smithtown Bay, but did not go to the end of it, for the wind was not favorable, and as we turned west toward the highlands of the upper lake I fell into a reminiscent mood. Up to this time we had occupied ourselves in admiration of the delightful scenery and in such careless chat as occurred to us, sometimes taking a pull at the oars, when we entered a locality becalmed by being screened from the wind, and sometimes pulling in the fish line that dragged over the stern of the boat to see why we never got a bite. But here the memories that crowded upon me completely absorbed my attention and I became silent. I had tramped all over this country in 1877 in the selection of a route for the Minneapolis and Northwestern Narrow Gauge Railroad, and so was familiar with the topography, not only of the upper lake, but of the whole route from Minneapolis to Hutchinson. The first preliminary line surveyed from Hutchinson to Minneapolis in the latter part of November, 1877, passed along the foot of the high bluff just in front of us, but the line was not finally located till October, 1879.