FROM CHICAGO TO DENVER THE BARTON FARM, FARIBAULT COUNTY, MINNESOTA, July 6, 1892. For a week past I have been Mr. Barton’s hired man, but in the early morning I must take leave of the family and renew the long journey. More than once during the past year I have found it hard to say good-by to an employer, but that is altogether apart from the real sadness of the present farewell. It might have been months ago, so strong has my attachment to Mr. Barton’s family grown and so well do I feel that I know them, that Mr. Barton stopped me on the wayside as I was leaving Blue Earth City and offered me work on his farm. I hesitated, but finally agreed to accept his offer for a week. I am staggered now at realizing how near I came to missing an experience which will always be a cherished memory of my life. With utmost hospitality I, a mere chance workman, picked up on the public highway, was taken in by the Bartons and made one of themselves; and during the days since I have shared their life of summer industry with hard work for all of us from five in the morning until nightfall, but healthful, worth-while work, and with it a home most daintily neat, and having an atmosphere of true refinement and of simple, genuine religion. My pain at leaving is precisely that which one feels in the farewells which end the rare, halfborn friendships of life. A voyage, perhaps, or a short sojourn in a foreign country proves the chance occasion of a meeting, and kindred hearts awaken to quick recognition of one another, and then their roads diverge and from the parting of the ways each bears a sorrow which is of the tragedy of existence. Who has not felt that sadness and seen its shadow fall over the face of nature and far over the coming days? There is, in my mind, no smallest fear of fresh encounter with an untried world. I have long since lost all such feeling, and can set forth of a morning as light of heart, as free from anxious care as are the birds which share my early start, and with a sense of pure animal enjoyment which is, I sometimes dream, not far removed from their own.