In 1886, says Professor Josef Wiehr,[130] he returned to the United States as correspondent for _Current Events_ (_Verdens Gang_) but he was obliged to undertake manual work to get a living wage; for a time he was with a Russian fishing vessel off the Newfoundland banks. For about a year he was secretary to Kristoffer Janson, a Norwegian clergyman in Minneapolis; he was then twenty-eight years old, and had been working on a farm in North Dakota. He wanted a chance to lecture in Minneapolis on literary topics but his ambitions were unrealized and he left America with some bitter feelings and the manuscript of his satirical book, _The Spiritual Life of Modern America_ (or _Intellectual Life in Modern America_), sometimes entitled _Of American Culture_. In a copy of this book, owned by Edwin Björkman, Hamsun wrote an inscription, dated 1905, thus, “A youthful work. It has ceased to represent my opinion of America.”[131] He scoffs at “American patriotism, engendered by means of tinfifes”; he asserts, “There is an enormous gap in American liberty, a chasm which is kept open by the thick-headed democracy”; he finds no cultural life but coarse materialism and “prudishness” and “self-satisfied ignorance.”[132] The book justifies a critic’s comment that it is “a masterpiece of distorted criticism.”[133] His short story, “Woman’s Victory,” in the collection, _Struggling Life_, is based on his experiences in Chicago; in the Preface, he tells of his life as car conductor. “Zacchæus,” in the collection, _Brushwood_ (1903), is reminiscent of the days upon the North Dakota farm.