Before noon I was in Cedar Falls; and from there west I found the Ridge Road growing less and less a beaten track owing to decreasing travel; but plainly marked by stakes which those two pioneers had driven along the way as I have said for the guidance of others in finding a road which they had missed themselves.
We were developing citizenship and the spirit of America.

Those wagon loads of stakes cut on the Cedar River in 1854 and driven in the prairie sod as guides for whoever might follow showed forth the true spirit of the American pioneer.
But I was in no frame of mind to realize this.

I was drawing nearer and nearer my farm, but for a day or so this gave me no pleasure.

My mind was on other things.

I was lonelier than I had been since I found Rucker in Madison.