And now he achieved nothing but misfortune by it, because he straightway fell in love with a Keokuk girl.

He married the Keokuk girl and they began a struggle for life which turned out to be a difficult enterprise, and very unpromising.
To gain a living in Muscatine was plainly impossible, so Orion and his new wife went to Keokuk to live, for she wanted to be near her relatives.

He bought a little bit of a job-printing plant--on credit, of course--and at once put prices down to where not even the apprentices could get a living out of it, and this sort of thing went on.
[Sidenote: (1853.)] I had not joined the Muscatine migration.

Just before that happened (which I think was in 1853) I disappeared one night and fled to St.
Louis.

There I worked in the composing-room of the "Evening News" for a time, and then started on my travels to see the world.