20 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 



could refrain from showing them courtesies which 

 were considered out of place there. I had the 

 middle-westener firm grounding on the equality 

 of peoples and it hurt when I had to extract it. 



But this was overcome in time and gave me no 

 trouble later. 



I had not been in Houston many weeks before 

 I got the "happy-go-lucky spirit" of the south 

 and west. I began to have visions of big deals in 

 lands, in cattle and other big enterprises and I 

 wanted to expand. Everybody who amounted to 

 anything talked of big things; big oil strikes or 

 cattle deals ; or a land sale of thousands of acres. 

 My middle-west sense of proportion was torn into 

 shreds and I began to get the wanderlust again ; 

 wanted to see some of this big action. 



To this day I have not entirely overcome that 

 desire to move; it comes to the fore every now 

 and then and it has cost me dearly more than 

 once. 



At just about the time when that hundred dol- 

 lars per month was getting on my nerves, I 

 received a commission from the United States 

 Department of Agriculture as a veterinary 

 inspector in the Bureau of Animal Industry, with 

 orders to report for duty at Fort Worth, Texas. 

 I have mentioned before that I took the civil 

 service examination before leaving Milwaukee; 

 this appointment followed it. 



I had not notified the civil service commission 

 of my change of address and the appointment 

 letter had been sent to my home address in Mil- 

 waukee and forwarded to me by my father, reach- 



