The general reader may not be interested in the details of my varied experiences in the numerous towns and cities through which I passed, nevertheless there were incidents in some of the cities well worth recording.
As noted before, the press, from the beginning, seemed to understand the object, and enter into the spirit of the work. It remained for one paper during the whole trip (Hamilton, Ohio) to solicit pay for a notice. My look of astonishment or something, it seems, wrought a change, and the notice appeared, and I am able to record that not one cent was paid to the press during the whole trip, and I think fully a thousand articles have been published outlining and commending the work. Had it not been for the press, no such progress as has been made could have been accomplished, and if the appropriation be made by Congress to mark the Trail, the press did it, not, however, forgetting the patient oxen who did their part so well.
An interesting incident, to me at least, occurred in passing through the little town of Huntsville, ten miles east of Hamilton, Ohio, where I was born, and had not seen for more than seventy years. A snap shot of the old house where I was born did me no good, for at Dayton some vandal stole my kodak, film and all, containing the precious impression.
Dayton treated me nicely, bought a goodly number of my books and sent me on my way rejoicing with no further feeling of solicitude toward financing the expedition. I had had particularly bad luck in the loss of my fine ox; then when the cows were bought and one of them wouldn't go at all, and I was compelled to ship the outfit to Omaha, more than a hundred miles; and was finally forced to buy the unbroken steer Dandy, out of the stockyards at Omaha, and, what was more, pay out all the money I could rake and scrape, save seven dollars. Small wonder I should leave Dayton with a feeling of relief brought about by the presence in my pocket of some money not drawn from home. I had had other experiences of discouragement as well: when I first put the "Ox Team" in print, it was almost "with fear and trembling"—would the public buy it? I could not know without trying, and so a thousand copies only were printed, which of course brought them up to a high price per copy. But these sold, and two thousand more copies printed and sold, and I was about even on the expense, when, lo and behold, my plates and cuts were burned and a new beginning had to be made.