on Saturday the seventh of October, 1871, he started out, again full of
hope. About a mile and a half to the west of the city he entered a hotel
at which he had often applied before. The proprietor had broken his leg
the day before. He wanted "a likely young man," Here was one. The
proprietor was himself an Englishman. Here was a youth whose rosy cheeks
proclaimed the shores of Albion. On Sunday he made ready. That night and
the following two days there came a calamity that horrified the
civilized world--perhaps the barbarians as well. The employers who had
refused him shelter and food ran like droves of wolves before a
prairie-fire, and filled their famished bodies off a charity that has
been likened to that of the Savior of the world, so freely was it given.
His hotel was not burned. In the arduous labors of housing three where
one had before been quartered he showed an ability which attracted the
attention of a dealer in real estate who soon took him into his office.
Here he learned a trade. His employer soon found that he had a man who
could make a map worth fifty dollars as well as the map-makers, and this
gave the young man practice. Hope, kindled into such a flame, led the
young man in a march of improvement that even continued in his dreams,
for he often dreamed out some combination of colors, some freak of
lettering, that elicited everybody's admiration. All this improvement