in the afternoon and
drove one hundred and eight miles to Carroll in Iowa. The first twenty
miles out of Omaha the road was extremely poor and very dusty. The trees
were much more numerous, black walnut, maple, ash, and catalpa being
among them.

Just as we felt that one could find his way across Nevada by a trail of
whiskey bottles so we began to feel that one could cross Iowa on a trail
marked by dead fowls. I had never before seen so many chickens killed by
motor cars. Perhaps the explanation lay in the fact that all along our
one hundred and eight miles from Omaha to Carroll we passed numbers of
farmers driving Ford cars. As we approached Carroll, we came to a hill
top from which we looked down on a valley of tasseled corn fields. It
was exactly like looking down on an immense, shining green rug, with
yellow tufts thrown up over its green surface. We saw but few orchards.
This was a corn country.

Carroll is a pleasant little town, with fine street lamps, and with a
green park around its Courthouse. We were surprised to find so good a
hotel as Burke's Hotel in a small town. Its landlady and proprietor has
recently made extensive improvements in it, and it is a place of vantage
on the Highway. The country around Carroll is very fine, being rolling
and beautifully cultivated.

We reached Carroll very late in the day and were obliged to take our
supper at a restaurant near the hotel. We were interested in a party of
four young people who were evidently out for a good time. The two young
gentlemen, by a liberal use of twenty-five cent pieces, kept the
mechanical piano pounding out music all through their meal. They were
both guiltless of coats and waist-coats. We had seen all through the
West men in all sorts of public assemblies, more or less formal, wearing
only their shirts and trousers. So we had become somewhat accustomed to
what we called the shirt-waist habit.

Many customs of the West strike the eye of the Easterner with
astonishment. This custom which permits men to be at ease in public
places and in the presence of ladies without coat or waist-coat in hot
weather; the custom which permits ladies to sit in church without their
hats; these and others which belong to the free West, the Easterner has
to become accustomed to and to take kindly. Several times in California,
and in Nevada, when we asked a question we received the cheerful, if
unconventional response, "You bet!" "Will you please bring me a glass