ack to Governor Wade, and signed the petition
for Monterey Centre; and then Magnus Thorkelson did the same. Then we
both signed another petition carried by both parties, asking that an
election be called by the judge of the county south which had
jurisdiction over us, for the election of officers. And just as I had
expected one side to begirt crowing over the other, and I had decided
that there would be a fight, both crowds jumped into their rigs and went
off over the prairie, very good naturedly it seemed to me, after the
next settler.

"Jake," said N.V., as they turned their buggy around, "you'll make some
woman a damned good husband, some day!" and he took off his hat very
politely to Virginia, who blushed as red as the reddest rose then
blooming on the prairie.

That was the way counties were organized in Iowa. It is worth
remembering because it was the birth of self-government. The people made
their counties and their villages and their townships as they made their
farms and houses and granaries. Everybody was invited to take part--and
it was not until long afterward that I confessed to Magnus that I had
never once thought when I signed those petitions that I was not yet a
voter; and then he was frightened to realize that he was not either. He
had not yet been naturalized. The only man in the county known to me who
took no interest in the contest was Buck Gowdy. When Judge Stone asked
him why, he said he didn't give a damn. There was too much government
for him there already, he said.

We did get the election called, and after we had elected our officers
there was no county-seat for them to dwell in; so that county judge off
to the south appointed a commission to locate the county-seat, which
after driving over the country a good deal and drinking a lot of whisky,
according to Dick McGill, made Monterey Centre the county town, which it
still remains. The Lithopolis people gained one victory--they elected
Judge Horace Stone County Treasurer. Within a month N.V. Creede had
opened a law office in Monterey Centre, Dick McGill had begun the
publication of the Monterey Centre _Journal_ of fragrant memory,
Lithopolis began to advertise its stone quarries, and Grizzly Reed, an
old California prospector, who had had his ear torn off by a bear out in
the mountains, began prospecting for gold along the creek, and talking
mysteriously. The sale of lots in Lithopolis went on faster than ever.

CHAPTER XIV

I BECOME A