there were so many and such various chances of successful and honorable career. In leaving Mr. Barton’s farm I found much the same external conditions as those with which I had grown familiar ever since I left Chicago. It was a rich agricultural region, and was inhabited throughout this section in curious, clearly defined communities. In one quarter was a German settlement, and in another a Norwegian, and a Swedish settlement in a third, while I heard of a French colony as a curiosity in another direction, and even an organization of Quakers. But there were native-born Americans in plenty, and chiefly of New England antecedents, as I found in my chance acquaintance with farmers by the way, and from observations of such a charming town as Algona, in northern Iowa, where I spent several days. On every hand it was borne in upon one, not merely from what appeared but from the invariable assurances of those who have lived long in the region, that among the foreign population no fact is more thoroughly established than that of its swift assimilation. So swift and sure a process is this said to be that the children born upon the soil, of immigrant parentage, seem to lose certain physical characteristics which would link them to an alien ancestry, and to take on others which approximate to recognized American types. Their children, in turn, are said to be natives of established character; but of them all none surpasses the first-comers, when once they are settled and grown familiar with our institutions, in a stanch, honest conservatism and in a loyal, patriotic devotion to their adopted country. It was nearly the end of July when I reached Council Bluffs. I was well worn with walking, for the last two hundred miles I had covered in six days’ march, and I was glad enough to stop for a time. But I did not wish to stop there, for my letters for several weeks past had been forwarded to Omaha, and were now awaiting me across the river. Unluckily for me, there was a five-cent toll for foot-passengers on the bridge, and I had only one cent left.