My time was so taken up in visiting old friends and seeing the sights in Chicago that I found no opportunity to make the acquaintance of many wheelmen in that city, but I met Mr. B. B. Ayers, who kindly gave me directions for pursuing the journey westward, and so after a week’s stay in Chicago I started for Minonk, 125 miles away to the southwest, to visit friends in that place, and the two days and a half passed on that journey were the hardest of the trip thus far. One would naturally think 1,500 miles of riding in the past five or six weeks would have so strengthened the muscles of my arms that they would not trouble me at least, but the hard, lumpy, rutty black clay roads of Illinois were too much for them. My elbows became so stiff I could hardly bend them, and the nervous strain occasioned by the constant jar was very exhausting. Once I was induced to take the railroad track and found very good riding for a few miles. At the station they told me the next train would not be along for an hour and it would come from the direction in which I was going, so I rode along unconcerned, for I could see ahead for miles. Suddenly, without the least warning, the sound of a short, sharp whistle from behind caused me to jump off and into the ditch as I never did before. It was well I did so quickly, for an extra locomotive immediately rushed by, and I came to the sudden conclusion it would be a long while and the roads pretty bad before I should again leave them to ride on a railroad track.

Two turnpike companies once started to build a pike from Indianapolis to Lafayette, Ind., seventy miles, but when within two miles of each other there was a disagreement between the two companies and that intervening piece of road has never been finished. Although there is a great deal of travel over this splendid pike there is not public spirit sufficient to fill up this gap of two miles, and for years the traveling public have driven off the ends of these two turnpikes into two miles of the deepest mud fordable. In Illinois there are no pikes even, all dirt roads; roads that are to-day in the same condition they were when the country was first settled; not a day’s work has ever been expended upon them. I passed farm after farm on which were fine houses, large substantial barns and hundreds of heads of stock, and every indication of a rich soil and worldly prosperity, and yet the road directly in front of these farm-houses has remained in such a condition for years, that for six months out of the twelve it is really dangerous for man or beast to travel after dark. I stopped one night in a fine brick house that in the East would cost four or five thousand dollars, and yet this house could only be reached by a lane in which the mud for six months in the year was hub deep, and a fine fat sow with a litter of pigs had full possession of the front yard, if such a mud hole could be called a yard. Another case I remember where the houses, barns, and stock indicated the farmer’s prosperous condition, and yet there was no well, nothing but rain water to drink. The fact is, all these things—and I could keep on mentioning them to the end of the chapter—serve to illustrate the intense Western desire for display to the neglect of comfort. The stately domes of their numerous court-houses seen on all sides make a big show. Their large barns with the farmer’s name painted on the side in red letters or shingled into the slate roof advertise the owner’s name and financial standing. Whatever is above ground, whatever can be seen from a distance, whatever makes a great display receives the cordial support of the average Westerner, but when you look for a fine country road, free of toll gates, or a good, deep well, or a nice cool cellar, or anything, no matter how much it might add to the personal comfort of the possessor, but which is below the surface or unseen from the surrounding country, you may look in vain for these evidences of a moderately high state of civilization. The diet of Western families is simply abominable. It is pork, fried pork, every meal. Their meals are as monotonous as their scenery. A farmer, rich in money, lands, and houses, will live for weeks on pork, when beef, mutton, turkey, and chicken are in great abundance on all sides and so cheap as to be almost unsalable. And yet, probably because their stomachs are out of sight and the satisfying effect of a good square meal is quieting and not of the spread-eagle effect, the farmers live upon the freshest and plainest sort of food. If the Western stomach could be inflated and placed in some commanding position it would be supplied with the choicest viands and the farmers would pour out their money to fill it to overflowing.

The other Sunday I came along to a meeting-house just after the bell stopped tolling, and riding out under the shed, I slipped off my knapsack, buttoned on a clean collar, put on my coat, and went in as quietly as possible, but every one in church except one old lady looked around at me, and I lost most of the Scripture lesson in consequence of this counter attraction. From her actions, afterwards, I think the said old lady was deaf and did not hear me come in, which accounts for her apparent neglect. Soon after a portly old gentleman came waddling up the opposite aisle, and after putting his hat, cane, and numerous other articles of extra baggage over in the seat in front, he held on to the back of that seat to break the fall, finally letting go and sitting down like a trip hammer. He immediately began to box the congregation, and had gone from east around to northwest, when he fetched up against me and put me under close inspection for so long that I wickedly comforted myself knowing that I gave him a crick in the neck. Very soon many in the congregation with eyes reverently closed and heads on one side in imitation of Alexander the Great, were apparently absorbing their spiritual food through their mouths, when the choir of eleven noises followed the sermon with “Asleep in Jesus.” The choir kept well together for a while, although one or two had to feel around in advance for the first note, but the last line was always too much for the tenor, and with their leader gone all discipline vanished and they came leisurely home in squads, three and four at a time. But slow and solemn as the singing was, the organist broke loose during the interlude, scampered up and down the scale, trilled, stumbled, snorted, and galloped off into the lots so far I thought he never would get back, and during his last escapade he stepped on a note that stuck, and that note loudly persisted in being heard through the benediction and sometime after the congregation had dispersed. When the organ breathed its last, the boys, old and young, all came out to see me off, and stayed so long it broke up the Sunday-school; so altogether, unintentionally, I caused a good deal of trouble.

Going through Aurora I met two wheelmen, Messrs. G. O. and Chas. W. Clayton, one of whom, but since my return I cannot tell which, accompanied me for 10 or 12 miles on my way.

Three-fourths of the area of the State of Illinois—a State eleven times as large as Connecticut—is underlaid with seams of soft coal, and at Minonk, where I spent several days in visiting relatives, is the most productive mine in the State. Over 700 tons a day are raised from a depth of 500 feet, and the machinery works with such rapidity that a ton of coal is raised and emptied in twenty-two seconds. After screening, great quantities of the coal, smaller than chestnut size, are sold to farmers, who feed it out to their hogs with beneficial results. The refuse rock and clay from this mine is carried up an inclined railroad and dumped, making a mound perhaps seventy-five feet high. The inhabitants think it quite a treat to climb to the top, they get such a grand view. It really is the highest point of land for miles around, and the view of a town ten miles away is to them quite a sight. Horses in droves in the lots or loose by the roadside are very common, but there is one peculiarity that distinguishes them from all the other domestic animals I have seen. The instant they catch sight of the bicycle they invariably come boldly toward it half a dozen paces and then turn and run like all the other animals. They seem to want to find out as soon as possible the nature of the machine, but their courage is short lived.

At Lacon I crossed the Illinois River, which was half a mile wide at this point. The river is very sluggish, falling only one inch to the mile for 300 miles.

During several days I had felt sleepy all the time, doubtless due to overeating and lack of exercise in Chicago, and, so, frequently I would lay down beside the road and sleep soundly for an hour or two, the hard clay bed not disturbing my slumbers in the least. In fact I had, by this time, become quite a veteran in this respect, being able to rest peacefully anywhere I felt inclined to stop.

At Rock Island I left the State of Illinois, which has a high-license system that works admirably, as far as I could judge from the frequent inquiries made, and crossed the Mississippi River into the prohibition State of Iowa. Imagine my surprise to find beer and liquor sold as openly as soda water in the city of Davenport. The State law is circumvented and nullified in this manner: The city council passed a law obliging all dealers in soda water and like temperance drinks to take out a license. If a man sells soda water, and nothing stronger, this law is not enforced against him; but if he sells liquor in connection with his soda he is prosecuted, not for selling liquor, mind you, but for selling soda without a license. Thus, beer and liquor is sold openly, and the city of Davenport has reaped a revenue of over $3,000 from this source within a few weeks. Before I got through the State of Iowa I could judge better of the practical workings of their prohibitory law, but the first day in the State certainly puzzled me. At one small village all the inhabitants seemed to be devoting the whole time that day to dancing and drinking beer. They were Germans, and it is needless to add that there was no downright drunkenness to be seen there. Even in Grinnell, a place of 3,500 inhabitants, that has never had an open saloon, the “boys” have their beer shipped in to them on such occasions as Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.

Traveling alone as I have, most of the way, I could appreciate to a limited extent the lonely task Thomas Stevens performed in crossing this country as he did, but never have I realized until I reached Iowa to what extent he had been shut out from nearly all intelligent communication with human beings in his journey through Europe and Asia.

About one hundred miles west of Davenport is a settlement of Bohemians. They number six or eight thousand, and their little villages are scattered along the Iowa River for a distance of ten miles or more. Their system of families is very much like the Shakers in Enfield, Conn., and beside keeping their farms up in excellent condition they manufacture woolen goods, starch, and some other articles of commerce. But not one of them that I met could speak a word of English, so that my experience for two or three hours was in a slight degree like what Stevens suffered for many weeks and months. All I could do was to make signs.

Although I left Connecticut before the grass had hardly begun to turn, since then I have seen nothing else but one everlasting sea of green. The country is more rolling in Iowa than in any of the States west of New York through which I have passed, but that change in the scenery was not of much relief. Thus far I had not seen the smallest kind of a wild flower to break the monotony of that color, green, dark and rich as it was. Imagine with what pleasure I came upon a sandy ridge of hills that were covered with a beautiful variety of wild flowers, whose colors seemed particularly bright to me, probably because they were the first I had seen in seven weeks of outdoor life. I spent an hour or more in picking flowers and in biting off the sweet tips of honey-suckles.

It is curious how many old veterans the sight of the knapsack brings to the surface. Very often when I lay it aside for a rest some one will pick it up and try it on so handily that I know without his telling me what his experience has been. And the recent speech of that arch traitor, Jefferson Davis, stirs these old soldiers from the top of their heads to the very soles of their feet. Imagine the feelings of one of these, a large-framed, well-formed man of forty, who walked around Minonk with me, up the coal shaft and down, without much apparent difficulty, and yet this same man, John W. January, suffered a thousand deaths at Andersonville, where his feet rotted off, and where he was reduced to forty-five pounds in weight, his bones alone almost weighing that much. Jeff. Davis’s words don’t exactly stir him to the soles of his feet, but from the words he and so many others, with whom I have talked, have indignantly uttered, I think these old heroes are sorry they were not allowed to do up the job more thoroughly at the time of the war.

The bicycle is getting to be more of a wonder the farther west it goes. Everywhere I stop crowds quickly gather, and then the inevitable string of questions! At Rutland, Ill., the landlord, who was a native of Connecticut, gave me all I could eat, but would not let me go till I had ridden all over the sidewalks and gutters in the town, under his direction. A few miles east of Grinnell I found I could not reach that place the night I was expected, so I took a freight train. While waiting for the train the whole town came down to the station, and to escape being almost bored to death I went out back of the station to wash my hot feet. But still there was no rest. An Irishman who lived in Hartford “thirty year ago,” was the first to find me, then two or three natives went through the same old list of questions, and finally a colored gentleman came around to pay his respects, just as I was wiping my refreshed feet on the grass. When the train arrived I laid out on one of the long benches, placed along the side of the caboose, and went fast to sleep, apparently. But at every station there was something in the air that told the inhabitants there was an object as strange as a wild man from Borneo on board, and the caboose was quickly filled with a gaping crowd of men, women, and children. One passenger who had already got some points of the trip, related all he knew and more, too, to the assembly, and it required considerable composure to keep on breathing regularly and keep my eyes shut with some old woman looking right down into my face and sighing for my lifeless condition, but as long as my eyes were closed no one asked me any questions, and that was a great relief.

As this is a plain unembellished tale of a bicycle journey in which facts are reported as they exist, not as we would like to have them, I may as well acknowledge, though not without a twinge, that during the first week out the chafing of a stocking strap brought out a boil on the side of my leg. The next week a second comforter appeared underneath that member, and painful as it is to acknowledge it (the bitterest pangs are now past), in a few days some six or eight more obtruded themselves, seriously interfering with the saddle. After some days of dogged persistence in riding and trying to rise above them (which efforts from the nature of the case were obviously futile), I succumbed and pleaded for a ride on a freight train; and when that gentleman passenger, who knew the real cause of my desire to take the train, told a lady passenger who was very anxious to know, too, that I took the train because—and he hesitated—because I “had got hurt,” his answer pleased me so I was sure the lady, who was looking straight at me from the opposite side of the car, would think I was writhing with pain even in my sleep. “Poor boy!” she responded, sympathetically,—“How dreadful! I do hope he will recover!”

Distance traveled on the wheel, 1830 miles.