“OFF IN A STAGECOACH.
“Returning to the hotel after the lecture, I hardly had time to remove my hat when I was again summoned to the parlor, there to meet the gentlemen who had called on me a few hours before. They had come to ask for another lecture, and on my declining urged that if necessary Mr. Bloomer could go on to Council Bluffs by himself and I follow a day or two later. They had heard enough to whet their appetite for more and were very anxious to hear me again. But I was firm in denying their request. I had given them one lecture with considerable inconvenience to myself. I was far from well, was anxious to reach the end of my journey, and could not think of traveling by myself on a stagecoach through a strange land and would not be persuaded to tarry with them longer. At two o’clock on a rainy morning, feeling tired and sick and suffering from a severe cold and want of sleep and rest, we bade adieu to St. Joseph and took the stage for Council Bluffs.
“The coach was filled with passengers, but no women were aboard but myself. There were several young men bound for the newly organized territory of Nebraska, and the famous Kit Carson returning to his home in Nebraska. Having heard much of him we eyed him with a good deal of interest and curiosity, but saw nothing remarkable about him except his clothes, which were of buckskin, fringed around the bottom, wrists and collar, a style entirely new to me. One of the young men had come from the far east, Massachusetts, I think, going to Nebraska to seek his fortune. He had run out of money and found himself without means in a land of strangers.