FEAT AS A PEDESTRIAN--LESSONS LEARNED AND AMBITION DEVELOPED
WHILE TRAVELING--ARRIVAL IN SALT LAKE CITY--EMPLOYMENT DILIGENTLY
SOUGHT--PRECARIOUS SUCCESS--MIRACULOUSLY FED.
The journey on the whole, though tiresome, was not otherwise
unpleasant. He enjoyed the society of his fellow emigrants, and felt
that he had been blessed of the Lord beyond his most sanguine hopes;
for notwithstanding his feeble condition when starting, he succeeded
in walking more than three fourths of the way across the plains. He
had also been cured of the asthma with which he had been so long
afflicted--not suddenly, but so gradually that he hardly realized that
he was outgrowing it.
He had also been benefited otherwise by the experience gained on the
journey. His views of life had become broadened by travel, and by the
evidences of thrift and enterprise which he witnessed on his journey
through the states, as well as by the possibilities of development
he could forsee in the great and boundless west. He felt like a bird
released from a cage after a lengthy confinement therein. He enjoyed
his freedom and learned to commune with Nature as he never had done
before. His knowledge of human nature had also been very materially
added to since leaving his native land. There are few conditions
under which human nature can be studied to better advantage than
while making such a journey over sea and land as that which he had
passed through. The crowding together of a large company in the hold
of a ship for eight long weeks, with meagre accommodations and food
generally insufficient and frequently bad, is certain to develop
selfishness, impatience and irritability where these qualities exist
even in latent form. His fellow passengers were actuated by the noblest
motives in migrating. They had accepted the Gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ, some of them at the sacrifice of material comforts, and most
of them at the cost of friends and prestige. Some of them had been
sneered at and persecuted in their native land, and had their former
friends and relatives turn to be their bitter enemies, solely because
of their accepting of and adhering to such an unpopular creed. They
had withstood all that, and, with faith still unshaken, were willing
to brave other trials and face the hardships of this long voyage and
journey, and the problems incident to life in a new and wild country,
to gain religious freedom, and because they regarded it as a divine
requirement. But human nature, even though tempered by religious
convictions, is apt to assert itself sometimes, and the helpless,
dependent condition of Niels placed him in the position of a spectator,
with ample opportunity to observe all that passed, and to study human
nature during the voyage as he never had done before.
Disputes occasionally arose among the passengers, which sometimes waxed
warm and developed into angry quarrels, all of which Niels noticed but
never took part in. Possibly because he was always an observer of but
never a participant in these affairs, he was several times appealed
to as an arbitrator, to decide between the disputants and effect a
reconciliation. Without making any pretentions to judicial wisdom,
he was, through strict impartiality, and tact in offering reproof
without giving offense, and especially by appealing to the religious
obligations of the parties to the strife, enabled to do effective work
as a peace-maker, and to gain respect therefor. He couldn't refrain
from indulging in a little mental philosophy on such occasions, and
making note of the fact that the tongue is a dangerous member if
allowed to wag too freely.
Three times during the voyage the ship had taken fire, always at night,
as a result of the cook's carelessness, and a general panic among the
passengers, if nothing worse, was narrowly averted. Upon the first
of these occasions the fire had gained sufficient headway before it
was discovered for a rather large bole to be burned through the floor
almost directly above where Niels had his bunk, and when the first
alarm was sounded Niels looked upward and saw the fire and noticed
the presence of smoke in the hold. He was able to "keep his head" and
helped in some measure in quelling the excitement of his fellows, many
of whom became almost frantic when they learned that the ship was on
fire, and that the hatches were fastened down, so that the passengers
were shut up in the hold like rats in a trap.
It occurred to Niels that the hatches had been closed by order of the
ship's officers to prevent a panic. He saw the futility of rebelling
against the measure, and counseled calmness and patience; and was so
calm and self-possessed himself that some of the more excited ones
listened to him, made a strong effort to control themselves, and seemed
ashamed at having been overcome by alarm.
The overland journey on the cars and the eight weeks' trip by ox train
in crossing the plains were not less fruitful in opportunities to
study character under trying conditions, and for the personal display
of those amenities that distinguish gentility from boorishness and
Christian charity from heartless selfishness. It was alike creditable
to the restraining influence of the Gospel upon the company in general,
and to the fine discernment and keen discrimination of Niels, that
he did not lose faith in his fellows because of the weakness they
exhibited under trying conditions--that he arrived in Utah with a
keener appreciation of the Gospel's power to mold human character to
conform to the divine pattern. He too had been tried as never before in
his life, and the consciousness of his own failings made him charitable
for those of others.
Some of his experiences on the plains had a peculiarly western flavor.
Although the company of which he was a member never actually came in
conflict with the Indians, they had a number of thrills due to rumors
of Indian hostilities before or behind them. One night the ox train
emigrant company camped on one side of a river which they expected
to cross early the next morning, while a mule train loaded with
merchandise camped on the opposite bank of the same stream. During the
night a marauding band of Indians stole and ran off about ninety head
of mules from the train last mentioned, driving them all right past the
camp of the passenger train, and so close to it that Niels heard them
galloping by, and wondered at first whether the noise was caused by the
oxen stampeding. Another experience that was new and strange to him was
seeing a rattle snake dart into a hole over which he was about to make
his bed. It didn't produce a very comfortable feeling, but the bed was
made right over the hole and the snake created no disturbance during
the night.
Before the journey ended Niels began to feel almost as if he were a
western man himself, so thoroughly had he entered into the spirit of
all that pertained to it. He had engaged in a struggle with a large
number of fellows for a common goal, and had developed ability that he
had never before known himself to be possessed of, and now, on reaching
it, he was ambitious to be a factor in the further unfolding of God's
purposes.
On his arrival in Salt Lake City Niels sought employment by which to
earn a subsistence, for he could not bear the thought of being always
dependent upon others. He found, however, that such work as he was
capable of doing was neither remunerative nor easily obtained. His
first job was at glove-making. He found two of his fellow country women
engaged in the business of making and selling buckskin gloves, their
customers in the main being overland travelers. He persuaded them to
let him learn the business from them, and then furnish him employment
when they had more work than they could do themselves. The work was
precarious at best, and not at all lucrative, but he appreciated
having anything to do, and being able to earn ever so little. After
attaining to some skill in that line, the demand for buckskin gloves
fell off until there was no longer any encouragement to make them. Then
he learned to sew uppers for ladies' shoes, and obtained a limited
amount of work in that line, but machines soon displaced hand sewing
of shoes. His means of earning a livelihood seemed to be diminishing
rather than increasing, but with independence unabated, he sought
work at whatever he could do (which was almost exclusively limited
to sewing) and went without what he could not earn, or which did not
come to him voluntarily, without making his wants known. In a land of
plenty, surrounded by people who were amply able to help him, and who
would willingly have shared with him their last meal, he lived almost
like a recluse, and sometimes actually suffered for want of food. Two
or three instances of uncharitableness and lack of sympathy sealed his
lips against any admission of his real condition or complaint, and
nerved him up to go without what he could not earn, or die trying. How
little he subsisted upon for certain extended periods is almost beyond
belief, and he probably would not have lived to tell it had not the
Lord mercifully and miraculously replenished his larder as He did in
the case of the widow of old who fed the prophet Elijah. Many times he
scraped up the last saucerful of flour to make a cake, only to find as
much more in the sack when hunger again impelled him to search for it.
And so it happened that while his faith in mankind sometimes wavered,
his faith in the Almighty grew stronger.
It must not be supposed from this that he was wholly without friends,
or that his existence was a cheerless one; but he had an aversion to
testing the friendship of his fellows by making known his wants, and
a feeling that his friends would last longer if not used too much. He
had entirely too much independence for a pauper, and too little bodily
strength to competently make his way in the world without help. His
circumstances varied. Sometimes for a considerable period fortune would
favor him to a limited extent, his health being such that he could
search for and obtain work and accumulate a little. He had the thrifty
disposition that characterized the Scandinavian race, and his natural
bent was to save some portion of it, however little he might earn.
He had the "home-making" instinct as it would be termed if he were a
bird--the disposition to build or acquire a nest of his own, however
humble it might be, and so he labored to that end. In this, however,
he met with many reverses. Illness would occasionally befall him, and
his petty hoard would be exhausted before he could again resume his
earning and saving. At quite an early stage of his Utah existence he
invested five dollars, the savings of a long period, in a city lot in
what is now the Twenty-seventh Ward of Salt Lake City, at a time when
lots on the north bench, away above the inhabited district, could be
had for the price of surveying. He could not afford to build upon it;
in fact, it was only by heroic effort that he succeeded in paying the
small tax upon it from year to year; but at the inception of the boom
in real estate in 1888 he succeeded in selling that lot for $500.00.
The possibility of owning a home loomed up before him as it never had
done before, and from that time he began looking for a bargain in real
estate.