There were few days in the year when Wheeler did not drive off somewhere; to an auction sale, or a political convention, or a meeting of the Farmers’ Telephone directors;—­to see how his neighbours were getting on with their work, if there was nothing else to look after.  He preferred his buckboard to a car because it was light, went easily over heavy or rough roads, and was so rickety that he never felt he must suggest his wife’s accompanying him.  Besides he could see the country better when he didn’t have to keep his mind on the road.  He had come to this part of Nebraska when the Indians and the buffalo were still about, remembered the grasshopper year and the big cyclone, had watched the farms emerge one by one from the great rolling page where once only the wind wrote its story.  He had encouraged new settlers to take up homesteads, urged on courtships, lent young fellows the money to marry on, seen families grow and prosper; until he felt a little as if all this were his own enterprise.  The changes, not only those the years made, but those the seasons made, were interesting to him.

People recognized Nat Wheeler and his cart a mile away.  He sat massive and comfortable, weighing down one end of the slanting seat, his driving hand lying on his knee.  Even his German neighbours, the Yoeders, who hated to stop work for a quarter of an hour on any account, were glad to see him coming.  The merchants in the little towns about the county missed him if he didn’t drop in once a week or so.  He was active in politics; never ran for an office himself, but often took up the cause of a friend and conducted his campaign for him.

The French saying, “Joy of the street, sorrow of the home,” was exemplified in Mr. Wheeler, though not at all in the French way.  His own affairs were of secondary importance to him.  In the early days he had homesteaded and bought and leased enough land to make him rich.  Now he had only to rent it out to good farmers who liked to work—­he didn’t, and of that he made no secret.  When he was at home, he usually sat upstairs in the living room, reading newspapers.  He subscribed for a dozen or more—­the list included a weekly devoted to scandal—­and he was well informed about what was going on in the world.  He had magnificent health, and illness in himself or in other people struck him as humorous.  To be sure, he never suffered from anything more perplexing than toothache or boils, or an occasional bilious attack.

Wheeler gave liberally to churches and charities, was always ready to lend money or machinery to a neighbour who was short of anything.  He liked to tease and shock diffident people, and had an inexhaustible supply of funny stories.  Everybody marveled that he got on so well with his oldest son, Bayliss Wheeler.  Not that Bayliss was exactly diffident, but he was a narrow gauge fellow, the sort of prudent young man one wouldn’t expect Nat Wheeler to like.