The overland journey on the cars and the eight weeks' trip by ox train in crossing the plains were not less fruitful in opportunities to study character under trying conditions, and for the personal display of those amenities that distinguish gentility from boorishness and Christian charity from heartless selfishness. It was alike creditable to the restraining influence of the Gospel upon the company in general, and to the fine discernment and keen discrimination of Niels, that he did not lose faith in his fellows because of the weakness they exhibited under trying conditions—that he arrived in Utah with a keener appreciation of the Gospel's power to mold human character to conform to the divine pattern. He too had been tried as never before in his life, and the consciousness of his own failings made him charitable for those of others.
Some of his experiences on the plains had a peculiarly western flavor. Although the company of which he was a member never actually came in conflict with the Indians, they had a number of thrills due to rumors of Indian hostilities before or behind them. One night the ox train emigrant company camped on one side of a river which they expected to cross early the next morning, while a mule train loaded with merchandise camped on the opposite bank of the same stream. During the night a marauding band of Indians stole and ran off about ninety head of mules from the train last mentioned, driving them all right past the camp of the passenger train, and so close to it that Niels heard them galloping by, and wondered at first whether the noise was caused by the oxen stampeding. Another experience that was new and strange to him was seeing a rattle snake dart into a hole over which he was about to make his bed. It didn't produce a very comfortable feeling, but the bed was made right over the hole and the snake created no disturbance during the night.
Before the journey ended Niels began to feel almost as if he were a western man himself, so thoroughly had he entered into the spirit of all that pertained to it. He had engaged in a struggle with a large number of fellows for a common goal, and had developed ability that he had never before known himself to be possessed of, and now, on reaching it, he was ambitious to be a factor in the further unfolding of God's purposes.
On his arrival in Salt Lake City Niels sought employment by which to earn a subsistence, for he could not bear the thought of being always dependent upon others. He found, however, that such work as he was capable of doing was neither remunerative nor easily obtained. His first job was at glove-making. He found two of his fellow country women engaged in the business of making and selling buckskin gloves, their customers in the main being overland travelers. He persuaded them to let him learn the business from them, and then furnish him employment when they had more work than they could do themselves. The work was precarious at best, and not at all lucrative, but he appreciated having anything to do, and being able to earn ever so little. After attaining to some skill in that line, the demand for buckskin gloves fell off until there was no longer any encouragement to make them. Then he learned to sew uppers for ladies' shoes, and obtained a limited amount of work in that line, but machines soon displaced hand sewing of shoes. His means of earning a livelihood seemed to be diminishing rather than increasing, but with independence unabated, he sought work at whatever he could do (which was almost exclusively limited to sewing) and went without what he could not earn, or which did not come to him voluntarily, without making his wants known. In a land of plenty, surrounded by people who were amply able to help him, and who would willingly have shared with him their last meal, he lived almost like a recluse, and sometimes actually suffered for want of food. Two or three instances of uncharitableness and lack of sympathy sealed his lips against any admission of his real condition or complaint, and nerved him up to go without what he could not earn, or die trying. How little he subsisted upon for certain extended periods is almost beyond belief, and he probably would not have lived to tell it had not the Lord mercifully and miraculously replenished his larder as He did in the case of the widow of old who fed the prophet Elijah. Many times he scraped up the last saucerful of flour to make a cake, only to find as much more in the sack when hunger again impelled him to search for it. And so it happened that while his faith in mankind sometimes wavered, his faith in the Almighty grew stronger.
It must not be supposed from this that he was wholly without friends, or that his existence was a cheerless one; but he had an aversion to testing the friendship of his fellows by making known his wants, and a feeling that his friends would last longer if not used too much. He had entirely too much independence for a pauper, and too little bodily strength to competently make his way in the world without help. His circumstances varied. Sometimes for a considerable period fortune would favor him to a limited extent, his health being such that he could search for and obtain work and accumulate a little. He had the thrifty disposition that characterized the Scandinavian race, and his natural bent was to save some portion of it, however little he might earn. He had the "home-making" instinct as it would be termed if he were a bird—the disposition to build or acquire a nest of his own, however humble it might be, and so he labored to that end. In this, however, he met with many reverses. Illness would occasionally befall him, and his petty hoard would be exhausted before he could again resume his earning and saving. At quite an early stage of his Utah existence he invested five dollars, the savings of a long period, in a city lot in what is now the Twenty-seventh Ward of Salt Lake City, at a time when lots on the north bench, away above the inhabited district, could be had for the price of surveying. He could not afford to build upon it; in fact, it was only by heroic effort that he succeeded in paying the small tax upon it from year to year; but at the inception of the boom in real estate in 1888 he succeeded in selling that lot for $500.00. The possibility of owning a home loomed up before him as it never had done before, and from that time he began looking for a bargain in real estate.
CHAPTER VI.
INVESTS IN REAL ESTATE—ACQUIRES A HOME—VICARIOUS WORK IN LOGAN TEMPLE—CONSEQUENT ELATION—PROMISE TO A DYING FRIEND—GRATUITOUS FULFILLMENT IN MANTI TEMPLE.
In the course of a few years he found an opportunity of buying a small city lot north west of the capital grounds, with a rather old house upon it, for the modest sum which his capital represented, and he actually became a landlord. He rented part of it to the former owner, who had lost the property through mortgaging it and being unable to meet the payments when his notes fell due. His income from the rental was only $5.00 per month, and it required half of that to pay the taxes upon the property; but he had a shelter for himself as well—not very comfortable it was true, but much more so than some of the houses he had occupied—and it was his own. It was all the more appreciated when he thought of the improbability of his ever owning a home of any kind had he remained in his native land. He could now look forward with more hope to his declining years, when age would naturally add to his decrepitude.
When Niels accepted of the Gospel in his native land, no feature of it was more attractive to him than the promise of salvation for the dead contained therein. He found comfort in the assurance he obtained of personal salvation through compliance with the Gospel principles, and he was anxious to do something if possible that his ancestors and friends who had died without a knowledge of the Gospel should share in the Gospel privileges. When the Temple in Logan was completed and opened for ordinance work, he joyfully journeyed thither and spent eight weeks in receiving ordinances for the benefit of dead relatives. He felt that he was coming into his own, that he was accomplishing something that made life desirable. There was something exalting about the thought that he, deformed and weak and frail though he was, could do all for the salvation of his dead kindred and friends that the most able-bodied man in the community could do. He had long admired the missionaries who left their homes in Utah and the surrounding states, and, at infinite sacrifice, went forth into the