During the next winter the word came to us that the railroad—­another one—­had crept as far out into the state as Iowa City, and when the freighting season of 1856 opened up, we swung off to the railhead there.  Soon, however, the road was at Manchester, then at Waterloo, then at Cedar Falls, and before many years the Iowa Central came up from the south clear to Mason City, and the days of long-distance freighting were over for most of the state; which is now better provided with railways, I suppose, than any other agricultural region in the world.

I couldn’t then foresee any such thing, however.  They talk of the far-sighted pioneers; but as far as I was concerned I didn’t know B from a bull’s foot in this business of the progress of the country.  I whoa-hawed and gee-upped my way back to Monterey Centre, thinking how great a disadvantage it would be always to have to wagon it back and forth to the river—­with the building of the railway into Dunlieth that year right before my face and eyes.

3

I found Magnus Thorkelson surrounded by a group of people arguing with him about something; and Magnus in a dreadful pucker to know what to do.  In one group were Judge Horace Stone, N.V.  Creede and Forrest Bushyager, then a middle-aged man, and an active young fellow of twenty-five or so named Dick McGill, afterward for many years the editor of the Monterey Centre Journal.  These had a petition asking that the county-seat be located at Lithopolis, Judge Stone’s new town, and they wanted Magnus to sign it.  I suppose he would have done so, if it had not been for the other delegation, consisting of Henderson L. Burns and Doctor Bliven, who had another petition asking for the establishment of the county-seat permanently “at its present site,” Monterey Centre.  They took me into the confabulation as soon as I weighed anchor in front of the house; and just as they had begun to pour their arguments into me they were joined by another man, who drove up in a two-seated democrat wagon drawn by a fine team of black horses, and in the back seat I saw a man and woman sitting.  I thought the man looked like Elder Thorndyke; but the woman’s face was turned away from me, and I did not recognize her at first.  She had on a new calico dress that I hadn’t seen before.  It was Virginia.

The man who got out and joined the group was a red-faced, hard-visaged man of about fifty, dressed in black broadcloth, and wearing a beaver hat.  He had a black silk cravat tied about a standing collar, with high points that rolled out in front, and he looked rich and domineering.  He was ever afterward a big man in Monterey County, and always went by the name of Governor Wade, because he was a candidate for governor two or three times.  He was the owner of a big tract of land over to the southwest, next to the Gowdy farm the largest in the county.  He came striding over to us as if whatever he said was the end of the law.  With him and Henderson L. and N.V.  Creede pitching into a leatherhead like me, no wonder I did not recognize Virginia in her new dress; I was in such a stew that I hardly knew which end my head was on.