parson to open the meeting. Alighting, I am engaged in answering forty
questions or thereabouts to the minute when that pious individual canters
up, and, dismounting from his nag, comes forward and joins in the
conversation. He invites me to stop over and hear the sermon; and when
I beg to be excused because desirous of pushing ahead while the weather
is favorable His Reverence solemnly warns me against desecrating the
Sabbath by going farther than the prescribed "Sabbath-day's journey."

At Premont I bid farewell to the Platte - which turns south and joins the
Missouri River at Plattsmouth - and follow the old military road through
the Elkhorn Valley to Omaha. "Military road" sounds like music in a
cycler's ear - suggestive of a well-kept and well-graded highway; but this
particular military road between Fremont and Omaha fails to awaken any
blithesome sensations to-day, for it is almost one continuous mud-hole.
It is called a military road simply from being the route formerly traversed
by troops and supply trains bound for the Western forts. Besting a day
in Omaha, I obtain a permit to trundle my wheel across the Union Pacific
Bridge that spans the Missouri River - the "Big Muddy," toward which I
have been travelling so long - between Omaha and Council Bluffs; I bid
farewell to Nebraska, and cross over to Iowa. Heretofore I have omitted
mentioning the tremendously hot weather I have encountered lately, because
of my inability to produce legally tangible evidence; but to-day, while
eating dinner at a farm-house, I leave the bicycle standing against the
fence, and old Sol ruthlessly unsticks the tire, so that, when I mount,
it comes off, and gives me a gymnastic lesson all unnecessary. My first
day's experience in the great "Hawkeye State" speaks volumes for the
hospitality of the people, there being quite a rivalry between two
neighboring farmers about which should take me in to dinner. A compromise
is finally made, by which I am to eat dinner at one place, and be "turned
loose" in a cherry orchard afterward at the other, to which happy