A Son of the Middle Border Part 28

Frank, being younger and less hardy than I, became clean disheartened, and upon me fell the responsibility and burden of the campaign. I certainly was to blame for our predicament.

We came finally to the point of calling at every house where any crops lay ungathered, desperately in hope of securing something to do. At last there came a time when we no longer had money for a bed, and were forced to sleep wherever we could find covert. One night we couched on the floor of an old school-house, the next we crawled into an oat-shock and covered ourselves with straw. Let those who have never slept out on the ground through an August night say that it is impossible that one should be cold! During all the early warm part of the night a family of skunks rustled about us, and toward morning we both woke because of the chill.

On the third night we secured the blessed opportunity of nesting in a farmer's granary. All humor had gone out of our expedition. Each day the world grew blacker, and the men of the Connecticut Valley more cruel and relentless. We both came to understand (not to the full, but in a large measure) the bitter rebellion of the tramp. To plod on and on into the dusk, rejected of comfortable folk, to couch at last with pole-cats in a shock of grain is a liberal education in sociology.

On the fourth day we came upon an old farmer who had a few acres of badly tangled oats which he wished gathered and bound. He was a large, loose-jointed, good-natured sloven who looked at me with stinging, penetrating stare, while I explained that we were students on a vacation tramping and in need of money. He seemed not particularly interested till Frank said with tragic bitterness, "If we ever get back to Dakota we'll never even look this way again." This interested the man. He said, "Turn in and cut them oats," and we gladly buckled to our job.

Our spirits rose with the instant resiliency of youth, but what a task that reaping proved to be! The grain, tangled and flattened close to the ground, had to be caught up in one hand and cut with the old-fashioned reaping-hook, the kind they used in Egypt five thousand years ago--a thin crescent of steel with a straight handle, and as we bowed ourselves to the ground to clutch and clip the grain, we nearly broke in two pieces. It was hot at mid-day and the sun fell upon our bended shoulders with amazing power, but we toiled on, glad of the opportunity to earn a dollar. "Every cent means escape from this sad country," I repeated.

We stayed some days with this reticent gardener, sleeping in the attic above his kitchen like two scullions, uttering no complaint till we had earned seven dollars apiece; then we said, "Good luck," and bought tickets for Greenfield, Ma.s.sachusetts. We chose this spot for the reason that a great railway alluringly crossed the river at that place. We seemed in better situation to get west from such a point.

Greenfield was so like Rockford (the western town in which I had worked as a carpenter), that I at once purchased a few tools and within a few hours secured work shingling a house on the edge of the town, while my brother took a hand at harvesting worms from a field of tobacco near by.

The builder, a tall man, bent and grizzled, complimented me warmly at the close of my second day, and said, "You may consider yourself hired for as long as you please to stay. You're a rattler." No compliment since has given me more pleasure than this. A few days later he invited both of us to live at his home. We accepted and were at once established in most comfortable quarters.

Tranquil days followed. The country was very attractive, and on Sundays we walked the neighboring lanes, or climbed the high hills, or visited the quaint and lonely farm-houses round about, feeling more akin each week to the life of the valley, but we had no intention of remaining beyond a certain time. Great rivers called and cities allured. New York was still to be explored and to return to the west before winter set in was our plan.

At last the time came when we thought it safe to start toward Albany and with grateful words of thanks to the carpenter and his wife, we set forth upon our travels. Our courage was again at topmost gauge. My success with the saw had given me confidence. I was no longer afraid of towns, and in a glow of high resolution and with thirty dollars in my pocket, I planned to invade New York which was to me the wickedest and the most sorrowful as well as the most splendid city in the world.

Doubtless the true story of how I entered Manhattan will endanger my social position, but as an unflinching realist, I must begin by acknowledging that I left the Hudson River boat carrying my own luggage.

I shudder to think what we two boys must have looked like as we set off, side by side, prospecting for Union Square and the Bowery. Broadway, we knew, was the main street and Union Square the center of the island, therefore we turned north and paced along the pavement, still clamped to our everlasting bags.

Broadway was not then the deep canon that it is today. It was walled by low shops of red brick--in fact, the whole city seemed low as compared with the high buildings of Chicago, nevertheless I was keenly worried over the question of housing.

Food was easy. We could purchase a doughnut and a cup of coffee almost anywhere, or we could eat a sandwich in the park, but the matter of a bed, the business of sleeping in a maelstrom like New York was something more than serious--it was dangerous. Frank, naturally of a more prodigal nature, was all for going to the Broadway Hotel. "It's only for one night," said he. He always was rather careless of the future!

I reminded him that we still had Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington to "do" and every cent must be husbanded--so we moved along toward Union Square with the question of a hotel still undecided, our arms aching with fatigue. "If only we could get rid of these awful bags," moaned Frank.

To us Broadway was a storm, a cyclone, an abnormal unholy congestion of human souls. The friction of feet on the pavement was like the hissing of waves on the beach. The pa.s.sing of trucks jarred upon our ears like the sevenfold thunders of Patmos, but we kept on, shoulder to shoulder, watchful, alert, till we reached Union Square, where with sighs of deep relief we sank upon the benches along with the other "rubes" and "jay-hawkers" lolling in sweet repose with weary soles laxly turned to the kindly indiscriminating breeze.

The evening was mild, the scene enthralling, and we would have been perfectly happy but for the deeply disturbing question of a bed.

Franklin, resting upon my resourceful management, made no motion even when the sun sank just about where that Venetian fronted building now stands, but whilst the insolent, teeming populace in clattering carts and drays charged round our peaceful sylvan haven (each driver plying the lash with the fierce aspect of a Roman charioteer) I rose to a desperate mission.

With a courage born of need I led the way straight toward the bas.e.m.e.nt portal of a small brown hotel on Fourth Avenue, and was startled almost into flight to find myself in a bar-room. Not knowing precisely how to retreat, I faltered out, "Have you a bed for us?"

It is probable that the landlord, a huge foreign-looking man understood our timidity--at any rate, he smiled beneath his black mustache and directed a clerk to show us a room.

In charge of this man, a slim youth, with a very bad complexion, we climbed a narrow stairway (which grew geometrically shabbier as we rose) until, at last, we came into a room so near the roof that it could afford only half-windows--but as we were getting the chamber at half-price we could not complain.

No sooner had the porter left us than we both stretched out on the bed, in such relief and ecstasy of returning confidence as only weary youth and honest poverty can know.--It was heavenly sweet, this sense of safety in the heart of a tempest of human pa.s.sion but as we rested, our hunger to explore returned. "Time is pa.s.sing. We shall probably never see New York again," I argued, "and besides our bags are now safely _cached_. Let's go out and see how the city looks by night."

To this Franklin agreed, and forth we went into the Square, rejoicing in our freedom from those accursed bags.

Here for the first time, I observed the electric light shadows, so clear-cut, so marvellous. The park was lighted by several sputtering, sizzling arc-lamps, and their rays striking down through the trees, flung upon the pavement a wavering, exquisite tracery of sharply defined, purple-black leaves and branches. This was, indeed, an entirely new effect in our old world and to my mind its wonder surpa.s.sed nature.

It was as if I had suddenly been translated to some realm of magic art.

Where we dined I cannot say, probably we ate a doughnut at some lunch counter but I am glad to remember that we got as far as Madison Square--which was like discovering another and still more enchanting island of romance. To us the Fifth Avenue Hotel was a great and historic building, for in it Grant and Sherman and Lincoln and Greeley had often registered.

Ah, what a night that was! I did not expend a dollar, not even a quarter, but I would give half of all I now own for the sensitive heart, the absorbent brain I then possessed. Each form, each shadow was a miracle. Romance and terror and delight peopled every dusky side street.

Submerged in the wondrous, drenched with the spray of this measureless ocean of human life, we wandered on and on till overborne nature called a halt. It was ten o'clock and prudence as well as weariness advised retreat. Decisively, yet with a feeling that we would never again glow beneath the lights of this radiant city, I led the way back to our half-rate bed in the Union Square Hungarian hotel.

It is worth recording that on reaching our room, we opened our small window and leaning out, gazed away over the park, what time the tumult and the thunder and the shouting died into a low, continuous roar. The poetry and the majesty of the city lost nothing of its power under the moon.

Although I did not shake my fist over the town and vow to return and conquer it (as penniless writers in fiction generally do) I bowed down before its power. "It's too much for us," I told my brother. "Two millions of people--think of it--of course London is larger, but then London is so far off."

Sleep for us both was but a moment's forgetfulness. At one moment it was night and at another it was morning. We were awakened by the voice of the pavement, that sound which Whitman calls "the loud, proud, restive ba.s.s of the streets," and again I leaned forth to listen to the widespread crescendo roar of the deepening traffic. The air being cool and clear, the pedestrians stepped out with brisker, braver movement, and we, too, rose eager to meet the day at the gate of the town.

All day we tramped, absorbing everything that went on in the open.

Having explored the park, viewed the obelisk and visited the zoo, we wandered up and down Broadway, mooning upon the life of the streets.

Curbstone fights, police manoeuvres, shop-window comedies, building operations--everything we saw instructed us. We soaked ourselves in the turbulent rivers of the town with a feeling that we should never see them again.

We had intended to stay two days but a tragic encounter with a restaurant bandit so embittered and alarmed us that we fled New York (as we supposed), forever. At one o'clock, being hungry, very hungry, we began to look for a cheap eating house, and somewhere in University Place we came upon a restaurant which looked humble enough to afford a twenty-five cent dinner (which was our limit of extravagance), and so, timidly, we ventured in.

A foreign-looking waiter greeted us, and led us to one of a number of very small tables covered with linen which impressed even Frank's uncritical eyes with its mussiness. With a feeling of having inadvertently entered a den of thieves, I wished myself out of it but lacked the courage to rise and when the man returned and placed upon the table two gla.s.ses and a strange looking bottle with a metal stopper which had a kind of lever at the side, Frank said, "Hi! Good thing!--I'm thirsty." Quite against my judgment he fooled around with the lever till he succeeded in helping himself to some of the liquid with which the bottle was filled. It was soda water and he drank heartily, although I was sure it would be extra on the bill.

The food came on slowly, by fits and starts, and the dishes were all so cold and queer of taste that even Frank complained. But we ate with a terrifying premonition of trouble. "This meal will cost us at least thirty-five cents each!" I said.

"No matter, it's an experience," my spendthrift brother retorted.

At last when the limp lettuce, the amazing cheese and the bitter coffee were all consumed, I asked the soiled, outlandish waiter the price.

In reply he pencilled on a slip as though we were deaf, and finally laid the completed bill face down beside my plate. I turned it over and grew pale.

It totalled _one dollar and twenty cents_!

I felt weak and cold as if I had been suddenly poisoned. I trembled, then grew hot with indignation. "Sixty cents apiece!" I gasped. "Didn't I warn you?"

Frank was still in reckless mood. "Well, this is the only time we have to do it. They won't catch us here again."

I paid the bill and hurried out, bitterly exclaiming, "No more New York for me. I will not stay in such a robbers' den another night."

And I didn't. At sunset we crossed the ferry and took the train for New Brunswick, New Jersey. Why we selected this town I cannot say, but I think it must have been because it was half-way to Philadelphia--and that we were just about as scared of Philadelphia as we were resentful of New York.

After a night battle with New Jersey mosquitoes and certain plantigrade bed-fellows native to cheap hotels, we pa.s.sed on to Philadelphia and to Baltimore, and at sunset of the same day reached Washington, the storied capital of the nation.

Everything we saw here was deeply significant, national, rousing our patriotism. We were at once and profoundly interested by the negro life which flowered here in the free air of the District as under an African sun; the newsboys, the bootblacks, the muledrivers, all amused us. We spent that first night in Washington in a little lodging house just at the corner of the Capitol grounds where beds were offered for twenty-five cents. It was a dreadful place, but we slept without waking.

It took a large odor, a sharp lance to keep either of us awake in those days.

Tramping busily all the next day, we climbed everything that could be climbed. We visited the Capitol, the war building, the Treasury and the White House grounds. We toiled through all the museums, working harder than we had ever worked upon the farm, till Frank cried out for mercy. I was inexorable. "Our money is getting low. We must be very saving of carfare," I insisted. "We must see all we can. We'll never be here again."

Once more we slept (among the negroes in a bare little lodging house), and on the third day, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with impressions, boarded the Chicago express and began our glorious, our exultant return over the Alleghanies, toward the west.

It was with a feeling of joy, of distinct relief that we set our faces toward the sunset. Every mile brought us nearer home. I knew the West. I knew the people, and I had no fear of making a living beyond the Alleghanies. Every mile added courage and hope to our hearts, and increased the value of the splendid, if sometimes severe experiences through which we had pa.s.sed. Frank was especially gay for he was definitely on his way home, back to Dakota.

And when next day on the heights of the Alleghany mountains, the train dipped to the west, and swinging around a curve, disclosed to us the tumbled spread of mountain-land descending to the valley of the Ohio, we sang "O'er the hills in legions, boys" as our forefathers did of old. We were about to re-enter the land of the teeming furrow.

Late that night as we were riding through the darkness in the smoking car, I rose and, placing in my brother's hands all the money I had, said good-bye, and at Mansfield, Ohio, swung off the train, leaving him to proceed on his homeward way alone.