In lower Minnesota a Swedish emigrant farmer hired me to help him with
his hay crop. He and I and his lanky son, Julius ... just coming out of
adolescence ... we worked away from sun-up till moon-rise....
The first day I congratulated myself for working for that particular
farmer. The meat at table was abundant and fresh.
But before my two weeks were up I had grown weary of the diet. They had
killed a cow ... and cow-meat was what I found set before me morning,
noon, and night,--every day. I complained about it to Julius ... "when
we kill a cow ain't we got to eat it?" he replied.
Every afternoon we participated in a pleasant Swedish custom. The two
women of the household, the mother and grandmother, with blue cloth
rolled about their head for headgear, brought us coffee and cake
a-field....
"Aeftermittagscaffee," they called it.
It refreshed us; we worked on after that till late supper by lamp,
driving back to the house by moonlight.
* * * * *
At Duluth I found that a strike prevailed on the Lakes. I was held in
doubt whether I ought to sail, for I would have to do so as
strike-breaker, which was against my radical code ... but, then, I had
come over-land all the way from Laurel, to voyage the Great Lakes for
the poetry to be found there ... and I must put my muse above such
things as strikes.