In lower Minnesota a Swedish emigrant farmer hired me to help him with his hay crop. He and I and his lanky son, Julius ... just coming out of adolescence ... we worked away from sun-up till moon-rise....
The first day I congratulated myself for working for that particular farmer. The meat at table was abundant and fresh.
But before my two weeks were up I had grown weary of the diet. They had killed a cow ... and cow-meat was what I found set before me morning, noon, and night,—every day. I complained about it to Julius ... "when we kill a cow ain't we got to eat it?" he replied.
Every afternoon we participated in a pleasant Swedish custom. The two women of the household, the mother and grandmother, with blue cloth rolled about their head for headgear, brought us coffee and cake a-field....
"Aeftermittagscaffee," they called it.
It refreshed us; we worked on after that till late supper by lamp, driving back to the house by moonlight.
At Duluth I found that a strike prevailed on the Lakes. I was held in doubt whether I ought to sail, for I would have to do so as strike-breaker, which was against my radical code ... but, then, I had come over-land all the way from Laurel, to voyage the Great Lakes for the poetry to be found there ... and I must put my muse above such things as strikes.
I signed on, on a big ore boat, as porter....
That means, as third cook; my task the washing and scouring of greasy pots, pans, and dishes ... and waiting on the firemen and deckhands at meals.