But the press, with but one exception, had been exceedingly kind, and understood the work. It remained for one man[25] of the thousand or more who wrote of the work, at a later date to write of his "suspicions." I wrote that gentleman that "suspicions as to one's motives were of the same cloth as the 'breath of scandal' against a fair lady's character, leaving the victim helpless without amende honorable from the party himself," and gave him full information, but he did not respond nor so far as I know publish any explanation of the article in his paper.
March 1st, 1907, found me on the road going eastward from Indianapolis. I had made up my mind that Washington City should be the objective point, and that Congress would be a better field to work in than out on the hopelessly wide stretch of the Trail where one man's span of life would certainly run before the work could be accomplished.
But, before reaching Congress, it was well to spend a season or campaign of education or manage somehow to get the work before the general public so that the Congress might know about it, or at least that many members might have heard about it. So a route was laid out to occupy the time until the first of December, just before Congress would again assemble, and be with them "in the beginning." The route lay from Indianapolis, through Hamilton, Ohio; Dayton, Columbus, Buffalo, then Syracuse, Albany, New York City, Trenton, N. J.; Philadelphia., Pa.; Baltimore, Md., thence to Washington, visiting intermediate points along the route outlined. This would seem to be quite a formidable undertaking with one yoke of oxen and a big "prairie schooner" wagon that weighed 1,400 pounds, a wooden axle, that would speak at times if not watched closely with tar bucket in hand; and a load of a thousand pounds or more of camp equipage, etc. And so it was, but the reader may recall the fable of the "tortoise and the hare" and find the lesson of persistence that gave the race, not to the swiftest afoot. Suffice it to say that on the 29th of November, 1907, twenty-two months to a day after leaving home at Puyallup, I drew up in front of the White House in Washington City, was kindly received by President Roosevelt, and encouraged to believe my labor had not been lost.