We went to bed and soon found it had other occupants beside ourselves, which, if they were small were lively and spoiled our sleeping.  We left before breakfast, and a few miles out on the prairie we came to a house occupied by a woman and one child, and we were told we could have breakfast if we could wait to have it cooked.  Everything looked cheap but cheery, and after waiting a little while outside we were called in to eat.  The meal consisted of corn bread, bacon, potatoes and coffee.  It was well cooked and looked better than things did at Bridget’s.  I enjoyed all but the coffee, which had a rich brown color, but when I sipped it there was such a bitter taste I surely thought there must be quinine in it, and it made me shiver.  I tried two or three times to drink but it was too much for me and I left it.  We shouldered our loads and went on again.  I asked Henry what kind of a drink it was.  “Coffee,” said he, but I had never seen any that tasted like that and never knew my father to buy any such coffee as that.

We labored along and in time came to another small place called Hamilton’s Diggings where some lead mines were being worked.  We stopped at a long, low log house with a porch the entire length, and called for bread and milk, which was soon set before us.  The lady was washing and the man was playing with a child on the porch.  The little thing was trying to walk, the man would swear terribly at it—­not in an angry way, but in a sort of careless, blasphemous style that was terribly shocking.  I thought of the child being reared in the midst of such bad language and reflected on the kind of people we were meeting in this far away place.  They seemed more wicked and profane the farther west we walked.  I had always lived in a more moral and temperate atmosphere, and I was learning more of some things in the world than I had ever known before.  I had little to say and much to see and listen to and my early precepts were not forgotten.  No work was to be had here and we set out across the prairie toward Mineral Point, twenty miles away.  When within four miles of that place we stopped at the house of Daniel Parkinson, a fine looking two-story building, and after the meal was over Mr. Henry hired out to him for $16 per month, and went to work that day.  I heard of a job of cutting cordwood six miles away and went after it, for our money was getting very scarce, but when I reached the place I found a man had been there half an hour before and secured the job.  The proprietor, Mr. Crow, gave me my dinner which I accepted with many thanks, for it saved my coin to pay for the next meal.  I now went to Mineral Point, and searched the town over for work.  My purse contained thirty-five cents only and I slept in an unoccupied out house without supper.  I bought crackers and dried beef for ten cents in the morning and made my first meal since the day before, felt pretty low-spirited.  I then went to Vivian’s smelting furnace where they bought lead ore, smelted