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.