ates to the First Progressive National Convention
at Chicago. They were among my most constant companions for the few
years next succeeding the evening when the bobcat interrupted the game
of old sledge. I lived and worked with them on the ranch, and with them
and many others like them on the round-up; and I brought out from
Maine, in order to start the Elkhorn ranch lower down the river, my two
backwoods friends Sewall and Dow. My brands for the lower ranch were the
elkhorn and triangle.

I do not believe there ever was any life more attractive to a vigorous
young fellow than life on a cattle ranch in those days. It was a fine,
healthy life, too; it taught a man self-reliance, hardihood, and the
value of instant decision--in short, the virtues that ought to come
from life in the open country. I enjoyed the life to the full. After the
first year I built on the Elkhorn ranch a long, low ranch house of
hewn logs, with a veranda, and with, in addition to the other rooms, a
bedroom for myself, and a sitting-room with a big fire-place. I got out
a rocking-chair--I am very fond of rocking-chairs--and enough books to
fill two or three shelves, and a rubber bathtub so that I could get
a bath. And then I do not see how any one could have lived more
comfortably. We had buffalo robes and bearskins of our own killing. We
always kept the house clean--using the word in a rather large sense.
There were at least two rooms that were always warm, even in the
bitterest weather; and we had plenty to eat. Commonly the mainstay
of every meal was game of our own killing, usually antelope or deer,
sometimes grouse or ducks, and occasionally, in the earlier days,
buffalo or elk. We also had flour and bacon, sugar, salt, and canned
tomatoes. And later, when some of the men married and brought out their
wives, we had all kinds of good things, such as jams and jellies made
from the wild plums and the buffalo berries, and potatoes from the
forlorn little garden patch. Moreover, we had milk. Most ranchmen at
that time never had milk. I knew more than one ranch with ten thousand
head of cattle where there was not a cow that could be milked. We made
up our minds that we would be more enterprising. Accordingly, we started
to domesticate some of the cows. Our first effort was not successful,
chiefly because we did not devote the needed time and patience to the
matter. And we found that to race a cow two miles at full speed on
horseback, then rope her, t