“Doctor Lynn, you are in the incipient stage of tuberculosis. You should return to California immediately.” That is what Dr. Graves said to me to-day and he is in a position to know what he is talking about. But I can’t believe it! Why, I can do the work of two women. Haven’t I supported myself since I was fifteen years old, worked my way through Medical College and built up a city practice by my own, unaided efforts? Besides, every one says I am the picture of health. My five feet eight of ener

Eureka, I’ve found it—the Great Idea—the craziest scheme that ever popped into a woman’s head! We’re going home—back to California on a tandem bicycle. We’ll carry a cooking and sleeping outfit with us, stop wherever the night finds us, work when we can get it, and somehow, with God’s help, we’ll win through. And it has come about in the strangest way. Dan got a chance to help a man he knows clean out an old barn which is to be converted into a garage, and in the loft along with the accumulation

We are off! Sunday dawned bright and clear and Dan and I were up with the first light. The neighbourhood assembled to receive our few poor sticks of furniture and household goods, for we deemed it best to give the things to our poverty-stricken neighbours rather than sell them for a few pennies to some secondhand dealer. Our friends think us insane, as well they may, but crazy or no, we will see this thing through. We surely made a picture at the start. Dan’s blue eyes were alight with eagerness

Dan found work! Only a day and a half, but a few hours were better than nothing, and gave us hope. The sun was setting as a wagon rattled up the road with Dan dangling his feet over the endgate. “Come on, Ethel,” he cried, “our friend here has offered us a place in his barn and plenty of dry corn cobs for the fire.” I sprang up and we loaded the wheel into the wagon. Soon the driver entered a lane which ended in a large barnyard, and as Dan began to help with the team, I unloaded the cooking out

We are in a new world. All day long we press forward, sometimes riding and again on foot, for the roads are rough and often muddy; and on every hand the beauties of an Illinois spring unfold before our enraptured gaze. With the western spring I am familiar. In March and April acres on acres of greasewood blossoms and wild lilacs were all swaying in the ocean breeze that sweeps the wide reaches of our Southern California valleys each afternoon. A wild spirit of freedom, an almost Pagan joyousness

To you, and you alone, little diary, will I confess a sense of deep discouragement. Mud! Mud! Seas of mud and oceans of rain! We have been out eight full days and have covered but sixty-five miles. The appetite that I have developed is truly amazing. As I sit by a fence, waiting for Dan to investigate those streaks of ooze and slush called roads, I’m hungry enough to eat Limburger cheese, which is saying a good deal for me. Yet I finished a hearty breakfast but an hour or so ago. I am ravenous,

Before the open door of a “side-door Pullman” I sit at ease on our bedding roll with my diary on my knees, watching the Iowa prairie billow past. What a relief to view the stretches of gluey, sloppy road, serene in the knowledge that for the present at least we are free from its sticky toils. We lunched last Monday beside the Stockdale siding and while packing our belongings preparatory to another tussle with the bike, a freight train pulled in. The train crew surveyed us with vast interest, and

At last I know the joys of domestic service. The pleasures of the “hired girl” and all the privileges and emoluments pertaining to her high estate have been mine. Our good friends, the train crew, who carried us out of Des Moines, dropped us off at the first little station east of Council Bluffs early in the morning of May 15th. We determined to cycle into town, get breakfast and look for work. We were making good time and had entered the suburbs when, as we spun around a corner and approached a

While waiting for our things to dry, the day after the experience in the grader’s camp, we visited our host and his family, who were shocked at the dangers we had encountered unarmed. The eldest son brought out a sharp lath hatchet, through the handle of which a hole had been bored and a stout leather loop attached to slip over the hand. This he handed to Dan with the remark that while it could hardly be called a deadly weapon, it would do good execution in case of trouble and at the same time b

The days go by as in a dream. We seldom see a newspaper and seem out of touch with the world. At night I am too thoroughly occupied with my blistered feet or else too busy “spouting for the eats,” as Dan expresses it, to keep track of diary or calendar. “Spouting for the eats” has come to be quite a joke with us. We stop near some farmhouse and Dan goes in for water. Presently along come the kids and watch our camp preparations with much interest. Usually they are followed by father or mother, o

Dates are a thing of the past along with newspapers, street cars, electric lights, the hope of a speedy arrival in California, and last, but not least, our faithful companion, the stout, green tandem. And it came about thus: We had reached a country of great level stretches, with grazing cattle and raw looking farms, of infrequent water and distant ranges of bare, blue mountains. Following a barbed wire fence, our road turned at right angles to the north, whereas the way should have been open st

We had worked a small town a half day’s drive east of Sydney, where pressing business awaited Mr. Adams’ immediate attention. Dan had a number of sign orders to fill and Mrs. Adams some culinary duties to perform, so it came about that Mr. Adams and I drove ahead with the buckboard, leaving the others to finish their tasks and follow. We rose early and began our journey as the rose and opal tints of dawn were disappearing in the mounting flood of sunlight. The air was cool and bracing and the ho

Alas, for our dreams of a comfortable journey home; alas for our expectation of seeing the country; alas, too, for our hopes of saving money for a fresh start in the world. We face mountains and desert with nothing but a grim determination to win or die. After we left Sydney, Mrs. Adams abandoned herself to a mounting jealousy, which became increasingly evident to us all. The hours that I was forced to spend with her behind the ambling mules, were torture. She took advantage of every opportunity

Dan came in last evening quite disturbed over his failure to collect his wages on the completion of the work. He worked very cheap for this contractor, who seems to employ many floaters, and now he is refused the little money that is due him. He went uptown this morning, and returned about four o’clock enraged and disheartened. It seems that his employer makes a business of hiring men who drift into town, at as low a wage as possible; then beats them out of the money altogether, if he can. At ti

A faint sunset glow illumined the dry, brown plain as we approached the grade west of Cheyenne. A pungent odour rose from under foot as we trailed through the low brush, and as we approached the track, the rails set up a low humming that steadily increased in pitch and volume. A glaring eye appeared in the distance. I had never attempted to board a train in rapid motion and was more or less ignorant of ladders, hand holds and other details of car construction, and the idea of leaping on the roar

One more step taken, and a nice long one, too. We left the passenger train that took us out of Laramie at the inevitable water tank. The first freight that passed we made no attempt to board, for excellent reasons. A number of hoboes were lounging about, and when this freight pulled in the crowd separated, some running one way and some another. As we walked down the siding loud sounds of altercation arose and a hobo came tearing up the path with a brakeman swinging a pick handle one short jump b

Well, little book, my entries are almost finished, for the business of building a new niche in the world with nothing but our bare hands will leave scant time for keeping a diary. Dan had several days’ work in Ogden. Then we took a passenger to the first stop west as usual and there boarded a freight. We had not gone far when a trainman thrust his head into the car in which we were riding, and failing to see me huddled in a corner, accosted Dan. “Hello, Jack. What are you riding on?” “A union ca