Chapter V: Part 5

But when I shed respectability and the cheap fame of having one's portrait and pages of "write-up" in the papers and put pack on back, and sallied forth merely as a man I found that the other and more precious kind of hospitality was not easily come by. Little is given anonymously in the United States.

Not that the country people despise the tramp, or hate him or set the dogs on him or even refuse him a breakfast now and then, but that they simply won't have him in their houses for the night, and are otherwise indifferent to his hardships. They do not look on the stranger as a fellow-man but as a loose wheel, a utility lying rusting in a field; or at best they look upon him as a man who will "make good," who will get a job later on and _earn_ his living. No one is good enough for the American till he has "made good." But this is the same in all commercialised countries, commercialism kills the old Christian charity, the hospitality of house and mind and heart.

In the old colonial days there was extraordinary hospitality in America, and this still survives in the West and North and South in places out of touch with the great industrial beehive of the East and Centre. The feeling still survives in the spirit that prevents Americans printing prohibitions. You never see the notice "Trespassers will be Prosecuted," though I do not know what one is to make of the uncharitable poster that frequently met my gaze in Indiana and Illinois:

KEEP OUT!
THAT MEANS YOU.

That is brutal.

Tramping up to Williamsport from Scranton I encountered forty-eight hours' rain, and only with difficulty on the second night did I obtain shelter. After being refused three times the first rainy evening, I found an old covered well beside an empty, padlocked shed. In this I spent twenty hours, sleeping the night and waking to a day of down-pour.

It was an interesting little hermitage, the three walls were of stone but the roof and floor of wood. One side of the building was completely open to wind and weather. In a corner was a dark square of clear water--the well. Half-way up the stone wall was a narrow ledge, and there I slept. I covered the ledge with two sacks, for pillow I had a book, a duplicate pair of boots, and a silken scarf. I slept with my feet in a sack and a thick tweed coat spread over the rest of me,--slept well. By day I sat on a box and looked out at a deserted garden, and the rain pouring on the trees and rank grass. There were young pines and hemlocks and maples, and a shaggy hickory tree. Beyond them an apple orchard climbed over a very green hill, and the branches were all crooked and gnarled and pointing. The blossoms had shed their petals, and there was much young fruit.

I gathered dry wood and made a fire on the threshold, and dried wet wood and boiled a kettle, the smoke blowing in to me all the while, and the raindrops hissing and dying as they fell into the embers.

About mid-day a Dutch farmer came and stood in front of the little house, and stared for some minutes and said nought.

I hailed him: "Good-day!"

He did not reply to this but inquired:

"Hev you not seen that notice on the wall--'Any one meddling with this house will be treated as he deserves'?"

I had not.

"Waal," said he, "it's there. So you'll put that fire out."

I complied.

"It's a wet day," said I.

"Yes, it's wet."

"I'd like to get put up for the night somewhere, and get a good meal. Do you know of any one who would do it?"

He was silent for some while, and stared at me as if irritated, and then he said:

"Guess about no one in this hollow'd take any one in. But you might try at the store at the top of the hill."

"Couldn't you take me in?"

"No; couldn't do it."

"Then, could you put me up a meal?"

"We have been out of food and are living on buckwheat cakes."

"I wouldn't mind some of them and some milk."

"No, no. No use. Wife wouldn't have any one in."

After some converse he learned that I was British, and he said, "There was one of yours here two-three years back."

"What did he think of this country?"

"He said it was the darndest country he ever saw."

There was no help for it. I had to abandon the well and go out through the never-ceasing down-pour and seek shelter and a decent meal. On my way to the store I met another farmer, and we had this interchange of talk:

"Can you put me up for the night?"

"No."

"Can you make me up a meal?"

"No."

"I'll pay you for it. You can have a quarter or so for a hot meal."

"We've just had our supper, and the women are doing other things now. There is a place on top of the hill."

A mile farther on I came to a General Store. It was locked up, and as I stared into the window the owner eyed me from a house over the way.

He came out, looking at me apprehensively.

"Can you put me up for the night?" I asked.

"No; not to-night."

"Why not?"

"We don't take only our own people. There's a place two miles on."

"Two miles through the wet."

"You're right."

"I can pay you what you get from your own people, and a little extra perhaps."

The storekeeper shook his head and answered:

"My wife is a little unwell and does not want the trouble."

"I can tell you you wouldn't get turned away like this in my country," said I.

"Where are you from?"

"From England."

"Oh, wouldn't they?"

"There are plenty of places where they'd take you in without charging for it. There are places in Europe where they'd come out and ask you into their houses on such a night."

"I dessay, I dessay."

"Well, I think the people about here are very inhospitable."

"I reckon you're right."

"I think you are inhospitable."

"Um!"

"Well, you're a storekeeper, I want some bread and some butter, and anything else you've got that doesn't need to be cooked."

"Are you hungry?"

I told him I was, and he determined to be more charitable than I had given him the name for.

"Well," said he, "I can let you have a slice of bread and butter and a cup of cawfee I dessay."

"Thanks. I should like to buy a loaf of bread and a quarter pound of butter all the same," said I.

"We haven't any bread in the store. The baker leaves it three times a week, and we've only enough for ourselves; but I can let you have a slice, and that'll keep you going till you get to Unityville. It's only about two miles away. There's a hotel there. The folks have taken away the keeper's licence, and you won't be able to get anything to drink. But he'll take you in for a dollar. You'll get all you want. In half an hour you'll be there. There are two more big hills, and then you're there."

He brought the bread, and as I was ravenous I was tamed thereby, and I thanked him. The bread and butter and coffee were gratis. He was really a kindly man. I shouldn't wonder if his wife had an acid temperament. The night's lodging, no doubt, depended more on her than on him.

I sat on rolls of wire-netting outside the store and finished the little meal. Then I went away. Over the hills in the dusk! It was real colonial weather; the light of kerosene lamps streamed through the downpour of rain, the dark woods on each side of the strange high road grew more mysterious and lonesome, silent except for the throbbing of the rain on the leaves and on the ground. I stopped at a house to ask the way, but when I knocked no one answered. I looked through the kitchen window at the glow of the fire and at the family round the well-spread table, and the farmer's wife directed me through the glass.

At last--in a flow of liquid mud, as if arrested in floating down-hill--a miserable town and a hotel.

When I asked the host to put me up he said his wife had gone to bed with a headache, and if I had not rated him soundly I should have been turned into the rain once again.

"Well," said he, "I cahnt give you any hot supper, you'll have to take what's on hand."

So saying, he opened a tin of Boston beans, emptied them on to a plate, and put before me a saucerful of those little salt biscuits called oysterettes. My supper!

In the bar, deprived of ale, sat half a dozen youths eating chocolate and birch beer, and talking excitedly of a baseball match that was to be played on the morrow. Mine host was a portly American of the white-nigger type. The villagers, exercising their local option, had taken away his right to sell intoxicating liquor, and now on the wall he had an oleographic picture of an angel guiding a little girl over a footbridge, and saving her _from the water_. Somehow I think this was unintentional humour on the part of mine host. He was an obtuse fellow, who mixed the name Jesus Christ inextricably with his talk, and swore b'God. But he gave me a warm bed. And he had his dollar.

Another evening, about a month later, I sought a lodging in a town on Erie Shore. The weather was very hot, and I was tramping beside marshes over which clouds of mosquitoes were swarming. There was no good resting-place in the bosom of Nature, so I imagined in my heart, vainly, that I might find refuge with man.

I came to a town and went into the store and asked where I would be likely to find a night's lodging. The storekeeper mentioned a house in one of the bye-streets. But when I applied there the landlady said her husband was away, and she would be afraid to have a stranger in his absence. I went to another house: they hadn't any room. I went to a third: they told me a man there was on the point of death and must not be disturbed. I returned to the store, and the storekeeper said it would be impossible to be put up for the night anywhere in the village. I told him I considered the harbouring of travellers a Christian duty.

"They don't feel it so about here," said he politely.

There was an empty park-seat at the end of the main street, I went and sat on it and made my supper. Whilst I sat there several folk came and gazed at me, and thought I might be plotting revenge. In America they are very much afraid of the refused tramp--he may set houses on fire.

But I was quite cheerful and patient. I had been sleeping out regularly for weeks, and shelter refused did not stir a spirit of revenge in me. In any case, I was out to see America as she is, not simply to be entertained. I was having my little lesson--"and very cheap at the price."

But I found hospitality that night. As I sat on the park-seat a tall labourer with two water-pails came across some fields to me, passed me, and went to the town pump and drew water. "Surely," said I to myself, "that is a Russian."

I hailed him as he came back.

"_Zdrastvitye! Roosky?_"

I had guessed aright; he replied in Russian.

"Are you working in a gang?" I inquired.

"No, only on the section of the railway; there are six of us. We have charge of this section. Where are you going to? To Chicago? Looking for a job? Going to friends there? Where are you going to sleep? This village is not a good one. _Ne dobry._ If you sleep there, on the seat, up comes the politzman, and he locks you up. So you be three weeks late in getting to Chicago perhaps. Why do you walk? You get on freight train and you be there to-morrow or the day after. You come with me now. I sleep in a closed truck with five mates, four are Magyars, one is a Serb. It's very full up, and I don't know how the Magyars would take it if I brought you in. But I know a good place. A freight train is waiting here all night. There are plenty of places to sleep, and you go on in it to-morrow morning to Toledo."

He showed me an empty truck. I was very much touched, and I thanked him warmly.

"How do you believe," he asked in parting, "are you a Pole or are you Orthodox?"

"Oh," said I, "I'm not Russian, I've only lived some years there. I'm a British subject."

This somewhat perplexed him. But he smiled. "Ah well," said he, "good-bye, _Sbogom_--be with God," and we parted.

A little later he returned and said that if I were lonely and didn't mind a crush, the Magyars would not object to my presence. But by that time I had swept the sawdusty floor of the truck, made a bed, and was nearly asleep. "Thanks, brother," said I, "but I'm quite comfortable now."

The Russians are a peculiarly hospitable people. Their attitude of mind is charitable, and even in commercial America they retain much of the spirit that distinguishes them in Europe. I met a queer old Russian tramp in Eastern Pennsylvania; he exemplified what I mean. He was, however, rather an original.

In a district inhospitable to tramps I obtained my dinner by paying for it. In this way and by these words:

"Can you give me a meal for a quarter?"

"Well, if you've got the coin I reckon we can do that."

I was sitting at a meal of canned beef, beans, and red-currant jelly, sipping from a mug of coffee, in which might possibly be discerned the influence of a spoonful of milk. The farmer was cross-examining me on my business--where had I come from? Was I looking for a job? Was I walking for wager?--when a strange figure appeared at the window, a broad-faced, long-haired, long-bearded tramp in a tattered cloak.

He approached the house, and about ten feet from the window where we were sitting he stood stock-still, leaning on his staff and staring at us.

"A hobo--looks a bit fierce," said the farmer, opening the window. "How do? Wha--yer--want?"

"Give me a piece and a cup o' milk," said the foreigner.

"A Polander," said the farmer. "I guess I turn him over to the missus. Sue, here's a man wants a crust and some sour milk."

"Ee caant 'ave it," cried the farmer's wife.

"No go," said the farmer, and shook his head at the tramp.

The latter did not utter a word of reproach, but what was my astonishment to see him cross himself delicately, and whisper a benediction. A Russian, I surmised.

"It is not over-safe refusing them fellers," said the farmer. "They may burn your barn next night. I reckon Sue might have put him up something. Hear him curse as he went."

The old Russian was going eastward, I westward; but I resolved to turn back, carry him some bread, make some coffee, and exchange those tokens of the heart which are due from one wanderer to another upon the road. I hurried back and overtook him.

The old man was nothing loth to sit on a bank of grass whilst I bought a quart of milk at a farm. "Coffee, uncle," said I. "Russian coffee. Varshaffsky, such as you get at home in Russia, eh?" Uncle smiled incredulously.

"Twigs, uncle, sticks, dry grasses; we must make a fire," said I. Uncle got up and collected a heap of wood. My coffee-pot soon reposed on a cheerful blaze. The creamy milk soon began to effervesce and boil. In went six lumps of sugar and eight spoonfuls of coffee. Uncle recognised he was going to have a good drink when he saw that no water was to be added. It was a pleasure to see him with a mug of it in one hand and a hunk of good white bread in the other.

I learned that my friend was tramping his way to New York. At that city he would buy a ticket to Libau, and from Libau would walk home to his native village, or he would get under a seat in a train. He had come 250 miles of his journey from Minnesota in an empty truck of a freight train; perhaps he would get another good lift before long.

"Why are you going home? Can't you find work?"

"Going to pray," said he. "I am going to my village to see my father's grave, and then to a monastery. I would finish my years in Russia and be buried in Russian ground."

"I suppose you didn't take root here; American life doesn't suit you? Didn't you like Americans?"

"Well, I lived with other fellows from our village, and we succeeded sufficiently well. Some seasons we gained a lot of money. But I never felt quite at home. We reckoned we would build a church after a while--a high wooden one that one could see from the wheat-fields when we were at work. But my friend turned evangelical; he became a sort of molokan, and one by one all the other fellows joined him and they went to meetings. I was the only one who remained orthodox. They reckoned I got drunk because I was orthodox; but I reckon I got drunk because they were evangelicals--because they had all deserted me, and I was lonely. It's hard on a man to be all alone."

"And why did you leave, uncle? What determined you to go?"

"I'll tell you. I had a strange dream. I saw my father, who is, as you know, dead long since and in his grave, and I saw a figure of St. Serge--St. Serge was his angel--and both lifted their arms and pointed to the East. I knew it was the East because there was a great red sunset behind them, and they pointed right away from it, in the other direction. When I wakened up I remembered this, and it made a great impression on me. I told Basil, my friend, who worked with me lumbering, and he laughed. 'But,' I said, 'that's not the thing to laugh at.' At last I decided to start for home. The idea that I might die in America and be buried there was always pricking me. I am not American. The American God won't take me when I die. Some of the fellows are going to take out their papers, because a Jew came round pestering them with books to learn English and prepare for examination, saying they ought to make themselves citizens; but that is not for me. I am Russian. Mother Russia! she is mine. They may keep you down and oppress you there, but the land is holy, and men are brothers.

"When I started home I was surprised that so many farmers said 'No,' when I wanted to sleep in their barns. I even got angry and shouted at them. But as I went further I got patient, and came to pray to God every day and often, to give me my bread and bring me safely to Russia. Then I got peace, and never was afraid or angry, reckoning that even if I did die in America I should be dying on the way home, and my face would be turned towards Russia. I reckon that if I die my soul will get there just the same."

"It's not often that in Russia, when a man is refused bread, he says, 'Glory be to God!'" said I, recalling how the tramp had crossed himself after the farmer's refusal.

"No; not often. I thought out that for myself. At first I was silent when people turned me away. I gave thanks only when they took me in. But after a while my silence seemed a sort of impatience and angriness. So I recollected God even then, and crossed myself. A tramp has no ikons, so he needs all sorts of things to remind him."

The poor exile had told his story, and looked at me with dim, affectionate eyes. He held my hand tightly in his as we said, "Good-bye"; he going eastward, I westward.

That was a way of living in the fear of God. That old man had real hospitality in his soul.

But in depicting the American farmer and storekeeper it would be unfair to characterise him as an inhospitable person. He is a great deal more hospitable than his actions would suggest. He is a kindly being. He has love towards his neighbour, and is more inclined to say "Yes" to the wanderer than "No." But he has often been victimised. He has been robbed, assaulted, insulted, his property has been damaged, barns set on fire, his crops in part destroyed by wilfully malicious vagabonds. The behaviour of the tramp is often a sort of petty anarchism; he has suffered in the heartless commercial machine, has got out of it only by luck, and his hand is against every man. He has cast over honour, principle, and conscience, and is able to gloat secretly over every little cynical act or meanness perpetrated at the expense of the good-natured but established farmer.

America has more tramps than any other country except Russia, and it would have more than Russia but for the fact that there are often about a million pilgrim-tramps on the Russian roads. The Russian tramp is, moreover, a gentle creature; the American is often a foul-mouthed hooligan.

In several little districts that I passed through I was questioned by the farmers as to whether I belonged to a gang of tramps who had been lurking in the neighbourhood for weeks. A tramp was evidently regarded as an enemy of society. Whenever I remarked on the inhospitality of the people a rueful expression came over the farmer's face, and he would begin to tell me that the old days were gone, money was tighter, the cost of living was higher, taxes were double, the land did not yield what it did of old, there were many demands on them here; but out in the West it was different. There, as in former times, every farm-house had open doors and free table to the tramp and wanderer. No one was more welcome than the tramp, he brought news and stories of personal adventure; he might even be persuaded to do work in the fields.

I believe the Americans would be a truly charitable and hospitable people if the evils of over-commercialism were remedied, and if business were made kinder and more human, and taxes were evenly distributed. There is an immense good-will towards man in America: it is only rendered abortive by mammon. I for my part have to thank numberless farmers, east and west, for kindly interest and good talks, loaves of bread, cups of coffee, and pleasant meals. Several times when I have been cooking by the side of a road a farm wife has come running out to me with something hot from her kitchen, with an "Eat this, poor man, and God bless you, you must be hungry."

Then the farmer's wife is often mollified when you are able to buy her milk and eggs. She is the person who counts in the farm. She must be approached; the husband has very little say in what shall be given to the wanderer. As a fantastic old tramp said to me:

"Whilst you are yet afar off the farmer's wife standing on her threshold, espies you and takes you to be a hungry lion pawing the road and seeking whom you may devour. She calls to her husband and he peereth at you. Perchance she fetcheth down the ancient blunderbuss from the wall; but when you come closer and hail her in English she says to herself with relief, even with pleasure, 'It is a man,' one of the attractive male species. You ask for bread and milk,--oh yes she has it, and with a scared look still on her face, though transfigured with a mild gladness, she fetcheth you bread and milk and eggs; and then if you can pay her market price the scared look goes away entirely; and out of the goodness of her heart and the abundance of her pantry she addeth cookies and apple butter, and for these you pay nought--they are her favour. Don't ask her, however, to put you up for the night."

The tramp always has a hard time to get a night's lodging. A poor, weak, bedraggled Jew, whom I met shortly after the forty-eight hours' rain, told me that he had been all one night in the wet--his pedlar's pack had got ruined, he was suffering from pneumonia, and had thought that such weather meant sure death to him. He had tried every house in five towns and had been refused at every one. It was a sad comment on modern life.

In the Middle Ages, and in the days when Christianity meant more than it does now, the refusal of shelter was almost unheard of. And in peasant Russia to-day it would be considered a sin. An old pilgrim-tramp once said to me, "When we leave this world to get to Heaven we all have to go on tramp, and those find shelter there who sheltered wanderers here." But Americans will not be judged by that standard. The early Christians received strangers and often entertained angels unawares, but the modern American is afraid that in taking in a strange tramp he may be sheltering an outcast spirit. Once tramps were angels; now they are rebel-angels.

IX

OVER THE ALLEGHANIES

Both the weather and the country improved before I reached Williamsport. On the height of the road to Hughesville I had a grand view of the mountains and of the sky above them, saw displayed green hills and forested mountains, and great stretches of ploughed upland all dotted over with white heaps of fertiliser. And the sky above was a battle-scene, the sun and his angels having given battle and the clouds taking ranks like an army. Glad was I to see to eastward whole battalions in retreat.

I passed through fine forested land with great hemlocks, maples, and hickories. A brawling stream poured along through the dark wood, and as I walked beside it a sudden gleam of sunshine pierced the gloom of foliage, and lit up boles and wet banks and wet rocks and the crystal freshets of the stream. Of all weathers I like best convalescent weather, the getting sunny after much rain. On the Sunday on which I reached the city the open road was swept by fresh winds, all the birds were singing, every blade of grass was conscious of rain taken in and of the sun bringing out.

Williamsport I found to be a peaceful, provincial town, well kept in itself and surrounded by beautiful scenery. It was looking its best in the freshness and radiance of a May morning. On its many hundred bright green lawns that run down so graciously from pleasant urban villas to the roadway there was much white linen airing. Williamsport is an old lumbering town on a branch of the Susquehanna, and though that business has gone away, prosperity and happiness seem to have remained behind. There was a feeling of calmness that I had not experienced in other American cities, and I felt it would be pleasant to live there for a season.

I tramped down to Jersey Shore, and the night after my halcyon day at Williamsport a thunderstorm overtook me, shaking the old barn in which I slept and tearing away rafters and doors. I witnessed Lockhaven under depressing circumstances, but in any weather it must be an inferior town to Williamsport, though it is also an old point for lumbering on the Susquehanna.

The weather remained very rainy, and I was obliged to forsake the atrociously clayey high-road for the cinder track of the railway. In doing this I passed up into a fine hilly country along the valley of the Beech Creek. I came to Mapes (to rhyme with Shapes), but found it a name and no more. A shooting and fishing resort with one house in it. The Beech Creek was a fine sight, running along the base of the embankment of the railway, carrying pine logs on its flood and racing the trains with them, roaring and rushing, the logs pointing, racing, turning, rolling, toppling, colliding, but always going forward, willy-nilly getting clear of every obstacle and galloping out of sight.

With one wet match I lighted a grand fire by the side of the line, and boiled my kettle and dried myself and chuckled. It might be going to rain more. I might be going to have a queer night, but for the time being I was having a splendid tea. It was a matter for consolation in the future that on the wettest possible day it was not difficult to light a fire with one match. The secret lies in having plenty of dry paper in your wallet; and I had a copy of a New York Sunday paper, which lasted me to light my fire all the way to Elkhart, Indiana, at least five hundred miles' tramping.

The district of Mapes is one of the most beauteous in the Alleghanies, or it was so this quiet evening. The summits of the mountains were obscured by mists, but up from the profound valleys the woods climbed, and the lovely tops of trees seemed like so many stepping-stones from the land up to cloudy heaven.

By the time I came to Monument it was dark. But a great glowing brick-kiln looked out into the night, and there were houses with many lighted windows. I was directed to a workmen's boarding-house, and spent a night among miners, railway men, and brick-workers. The keeper of the establishment was doubtful whether he would have me, but thought there was "one feller on the third floor gone."

"What will be your charge?" I asked.

"Well," said he, "a won't charge ye anything for the bed, but the breakfast to-morrow morning will be twenty-five cents."

"My!" I thought, "here's something choice coming along in the shape of a bed."

It turned out to be four in a room and two in a bed, all sleeping in their clothes. There was even some doubt as to whether there was not a fifth coming.

One man was in bed already; I chose the unoccupied bed, and laid myself upon it in full tramping attire. You can imagine the state of sheets and quilts in a bed that brickmakers and soft-coal miners sleep in their clothes.

The man in bed was an Anglo-Saxon American. When I said I was from England he asked me if I had walked it all.

"I came by steamer of course to New York."

"How many days?"

"Eight."

"Weren't you afraid?" said he. "Quite out of sight of land no doubt? You wouldn't get me to go, not for many thousand dollars. That _Titanic_ was an affair, wasn't it. Fifteen hundred--straight to the bottom! I'd have shot myself had I been there."

"What do you work at here?"

"Brick-making."

"Lot of men?"

"Plenty of work. Two truck-loads of extra men coming to-morrow."

"Foreigners?"

"Italians."

I told him the story of a storm at sea with the exaggeration to which one is too prone when addressing simple souls. I rather harrowed him with an account of cook's enamel ware and kitchen things rolling about and jangling when every one was saying his prayers.

Presently I remarked irrelevantly, "My goodness! What a noise the frogs make here!"

"That's no noise," said he; "I'm going to sleep."

After a while his bedfellow came in and he, before turning in, got down on his knees in the narrow passage between the beds and prayed--I should say, a whole half-hour, talking half to himself, half-aloud. Whilst he was doing so my bedfellow came in, a tall, heavy, tired Pole, who looked neither to right nor left, but just clambered over me and lay down with his face to the wall and slept and snored.

It rained heavily all night, and next morning it still poured. After a disreputably bad breakfast I sat on a chair at the door of the establishment and watched the thresh of the rain on two great pools beside a road of coal-dust, looked out at the lank grass, the tomato-can dump, the sodden refuse of the boarding-house, and away to the square red chimney of the brick factory belching forth black smoke.

"Say, stranger," said mine host, "I'm going to wade into that cave and hand out potatoes; will you take them from me?" This was the first time I had been called stranger in America, and it sounded pleasant in my ears.

About eleven o'clock in the morning the rain ceased, and I went on to the next point on the railway. The track climbed higher and higher, and I learned that on the morrow I should reach the top of the Alleghany Mountains--Snow Shoe Creek.

It was a fine walk to Orviston under the heavily clouded sky. The mountain sides were all a-leak with springs and trickling streams and cascades. There was an accompanying music of the racing Beech Creek on the one hand, and of the gushing rivulets on the other; but this would be swallowed up and lost every now and then in the uproar of the oncoming and passing freight train of coal; the appalling, hammering, affrighting freight train passing within two feet of me, taking my breath away with the thought of its power. How pleasant it was, though, to listen to the rebirth of the music of the waters coming to the ear in the wind of the last trucks as they passed.

Orviston prides itself on its fire-bricks. The whole village is made of them, and the pavement as well, and every brick is stamped "Orviston," and is both a commodity and an advertisement.

After I had visited the village store for provisions I re-entered the railway enclosure, and read as I did so the following notice typical of America: "Cultivate the safety habit--if you see anything wrong report it to the man with the button."

I met the man with the button after I had walked a mile along the way; he was a Slovak, working on the line with pick and shovel, a tall, brawny Slav, and with him a rather tubby little chap of the same nationality.

"You haf no räit on these läins," said the Slovak. "You go off. You are no railway man. What are you? Slavish?"

I replied in English, but on second thoughts went on in Russian. He understood, and was mollified at once. He was in America for the second time, they neither of them liked the old country. I photographed them as they stood--John Kresica and Paul Cipriela. They were unmarried men, and lived in a "boarding-house" in Orviston. They worked in a gang. Would I please send them a copy of the photograph? I agreed to do so; then, when I moved to go off the lines, the man with the button cried out, smiling:

"Hi! All-right, go ahead!"

I went on blithely. There was a change of weather in the afternoon. At one o'clock the sun lifted his arms and pulled apart the mist curtains at the zenith and disclosed himself--a miraculous apparition. The whole sky was cloudy, but the sun was shining. An apparition, the ghost of a sun, and then a reality--hot, light-pouring, cloud-dispersing. By two it was a hot summer day, at three there was not a cloud in the sky. What a change! It was clear that summer had progressed during the rain; insects of bright hues were on the wing, huge yellow-winged butterflies, crimson-thighed grasshoppers, green sun-beetles. A new-born butterfly settled three times on my sleeve; the fourth time I just caught him. I held him delicately between two fingers and let him go.

During a most exhilarating evening I tramped past houseless Panther and got to Cato at nightfall. Cato was a railway station of no pretensions; a broken-down shed with no door, no ticket offices, no porter. Passengers who wished to take a train had to wave a flag and trust to the eyesight of the engine-driver. For village, all that I could make out was a coal-bank, a shaft, and some heaps of old iron.

It was an extremely cold night, so I slept in the railway shed on a plank form that ran along the three sides of the building. I lay and looked out at the bright night shining over the mountains, dozed, waked, dozed again. Shortly after midnight I had a strange visitor. I was lying half-asleep, looking at a misshapen star which was resting on the mountains opposite me, which became a silver thumb pointing upward, which became at last the young crescent moon just rising. I was in that somnolent state when you ask, as you see the moon rising behind dark branches of the forest, Is it the moon in eclipse? is it a comet?--when a portly man with shovel hat came out of the night, stood in front of the shed, leaned on a thick cudgel, and looked in.

"Hallo!" said I.

"Haffing sum sleep?" queried the visitor.

"Yes, trying to; but it's a cold night."

"Ah, you haf bed pretty goot!"

"Who are you,--the night watchman?"

"Naw. You don't see a näit wawtchman without 'is lantern."

The old chap came close up to me, bent down, and whispered, "I'm in the same box as yourself."

"Walking all night?" I asked.

"The only vay to keep varm," said the old man ruefully. He took out a shining watch from his waistcoat.

"Three o'clock," said he. "In an hour it will be daylight. Oh, I think I'll try and sleep here an hour. Say, is there to eat along the road?"

I wasn't quite sure what he meant.

"Not much," I hazarded.

"Wot are you--you don't speak the langwage very goot," said the tramp.

"English."

"I am a Cherman."

The old man lay down on the plank form, resting his head on my feet, and using them for a pillow.

"How old are ye?" he went on.... "Hoh, I can give you forty years. If I were in Germany now I should be getting an army pension."

"Are you going back?" said I.

"Naw, naw. I could never give up this country."

We composed ourselves to sleep, but with his head resting on my feet I was too uncomfortable. "Presently I'll make a fire," said I, "and we'll have hot tea and some bread and butter." And after about twenty minutes I got up, put my boots on, and wandered out to find wood to make a fire. It was about half an hour before dawn. There was a hoar frost, and everything was cold and rimy to the touch. But I made up a bundle of last year's weeds, now sodden straws, and laid them on a half-sheet of my Sunday newspaper. That made a fine blaze, and with twigs and sticks and bits of old plank, I soon had a fine bonfire going. The old German came out and watched me incredulously. He didn't think it was possible to make a fire on such a morning. But he was soon convinced, and went about picking up chunks of wood desultorily, alleging the while that he couldn't have lit such a fire in three hours; evidently I knew how to do it.

"Shall I make tea or coffee?" I asked.

"Cawfee," said the old chap, his mouth watering. The word tea did not represent to him anything good.

"After a cup of hot cawfee I can go a long way. Hot cawfee, mind yer. Varm cawfee 'salright for lunch, but in the morning it must be hot. The only thing better than a cup of cawfee is a pint of whisky.... Say, you've enough fire here now to roast a chicken."

"Wish I had one, we'd roast it."

I emptied the last of my sugar into the pot, and seven or eight spoonfuls of coffee. It was to be "Turkish." The old tramp sat down on the stump of a tree, took out a curly German pipe, and then put a red coal on it. He had matches, but was economical in the matter of lights. "Say," he said to me later, pointing to the ground, "you've dropped a good match." I picked it up.

The coffee was "real good." The old fellow drank it through his thick moustache, and dipping his bread into his cup, munched great mouthfuls. I had offered him butter with his bread, but he refused. "Booter" was nothing to him. He liked apple-"booter."

"Say, you've got on a powerful pair of boots!"

"I need them, tramping to Chicago."

"Chicago's not a bad town if you know where to go. Say, presently you'll come to Snow Shoe. Don't go past it. You'll get something there."

The old man stopped a minute in his talk, and stared at me knowingly, didactically.

"Rich miners," he went on. "You need only ask. See this packet of tobacco, they gave it to me at the Company store. That's the thing I can't get on without, must have it. If a man asks me for a smoke and I haf it to give I must give him also. Where've you come from yesterday, Orviston?"

"No. Monument."

"Is there anything there?" he whispered mysteriously.

"Not much to be had," said I. "But there's a good deal of work, and they're bringing in a big gang of Italians. You can't get much of anything at the farms."

"Where Guineas are, I don't go. I don't like the Eyetaylians."

"D'you like the Jews?"

"They're a good people," said he. "Don't say anything against the Jews. I know a Jew who gives free boots to tramps. Last year I went into his store, and one of the shopmen came up to me and said, 'I know what you want, you'll get it. I'll tell the boss when he comes out.' And he gave me a powerful pair of boots, and sent me across the road to the Quick-lunch with a letter to the boss there, to give me a good dinner. So I never say anything against the Jews."

"Do you know Cleveland?" said I.

"You bet. Lived there ten years ago, had a job on a Lake steamer. I worked one summer on a boat."

The old tramp stared at me as if he had confessed a sin. "Worked like a mule," he added sententiously, and stared again. "I had a home there, and lived just like a married man. But when I wanted to move on to Pittsburg my girl wouldn't go."

"I expect you're the sort of man who has run away from a wife in Germany," said I.

"Naw, naw. Never married."

Then he began to talk of his loves and conquests. At his age you'd have thought his mind would not have been filled with such vanities. He evidently earned money now and then, and went on "sprees." He averred that he had not a dime now, and was altogether "on the nail." I had an idea, however, that he had hidden on him, somewhere, passage-money to take him to Germany, to get that army pension. The Germans are a cautious people. They are cautious and cogitative, yet I wonder what the old man thought of me as he stumped away, leaning on his heavy walking-stick. He had been twenty-seven years on the road, and was very shrewd and experienced in many ways. Perhaps for a moment he took me for a gentleman burglar. He was immensely curious to see what was in my sack, but he probably reflected--"Here is good hot, coffee, a fire, and a pleasant young man; make the most of it, and ask no inconvenient questions."

I put the fire out, shouldered my pack, and resumed the journey to Snow Shoe. The sun had risen, but his warmth was as yet shut away behind the wall of the mountains. The hoar-frost of night had not melted yet, and it was necessary to walk briskly to keep warm. It was so cold that I got to Snow Shoe before ten o'clock.

A feature of this tramping along the rails was the danger in crossing bridges. It was a single line, and as there were some twenty bridges over the flood of the river, there were twenty ordeals of trusting that no train would suddenly appear from a corner of the winding track and run me down. If a train had come whilst I was half-way across a bridge there was no refuge but the river, and I was always prepared to jump. For several nights after this bit of tramping I dreamed of crossing bridges, running on the sleepers and just passing the last beams as engines swept down on me. But it was pleasant climbing up so high, and feeling that within an hour or so Snow Shoe would be achieved. I had lived in the rumour of Snow Shoe for two days, and the name had come to correspond to something very beautiful in my mind. The sound of the name is pleasant to the ear, and every now and then, as I hurried along, I asked, "Snow Shoe, Snow Shoe, what shall I find there?" I imagined the pioneers who first came up this beautiful valley and gave to an Indian settlement the dainty name--through what virginal loveliness they had passed! Then I thought of the reporter-poet of Scranton who objected to the beauty of Nature because it was independent of man.

Then, man came along, the engine-man with his endless, empty freight train and his bellowing, steaming engine howling through the valley. One after another eight freight trains, each about a quarter of a mile long, came grinding past me, going up to the collieries to take their daily loads of carbon. Somehow I did not object; it was new America, the America of to-day careering over the America of 1492, and had to be accepted.

But Snow Shoe gave me pause. When I arrived at the little slate-roofed mining settlement I found there was considerable excitement among the children there. A cow had just been cut to pieces by the last freight train. The driver had driven his train over the beast and on without a word of remark or a hesitation, and a farmer was complaining bitterly, but the children--young Americans, Russians, Ruthenians, Slovaks, the ones who have in their keeping the America of to-morrow--were sitting round the remains, helling and God-damning and asking me facetious questions. And that was the answer to what I had asked myself--What shall I see at Snow Shoe? What am I walking so far and so high for to see?

Snow Shoe was the dreariest possible mining settlement, and its inhabitants slouched about its coaly ways and in and out of the saloons. Scarcely any one could speak English, and the mines were worked almost exclusively by Poles and Slovaks. The highest point in the Alleghanies, a hand of earth stretched up to heaven, perhaps a maledictory hand.

X

DECORATION DAY

America celebrates no "Whit-Monday," but has Decoration Day instead; a great national festival, when medals are pinned on to veterans, the soldiers of the War of North against South are remembered, and the graves of heroes are decorated with flags and flowers. On Decoration Day, and again later, on Independence Day, the whole populace ceases work in the name of America, and flocks the streets, sings national songs and hymns, goes on procession, fires salutes, listens to speeches. We British are just wildly glad to get free from toil when Whit-Monday and August Bank Holiday come round. We have no national or religious fervour on these days. We have even been known to flock happily to Hampstead and Epping Forest to the strains of "England's going down the Hill." Upon occasion the British can be clamorously patriotic, but only upon occasion. But the American citizen is, to use his own phrase, "crazy about America" all the while. The "days-off" that we get are not only off work, but off everything serious. The American still nurses the hope with which he came across the ocean, and he is enthusiastically attached to the republic he has made and the principles of that republic.

I spent Decoration Day at Clearfield, a little mining and agricultural town on the other side of the Alleghanies. I put up at a hotel for two or three days, and just gave myself to the town for the time. Early on the festival day I was out to see how the workaday world was taking things. All the shops were closed except the ice-cream soda bars and the fruiterers. There were flags on the banks and loungers on the streets. Young men were walking about with flags in their hat ribbons. The cycles and automobiles on the roadway had their wheels swathed with the stars and stripes. There were negroes and negresses standing _endimanche's_ at street corners. Now and then a girl in white dress and white boots would trip from a house to a shop and back again. There was an air best expressed by the words of the song:

Go along and get yer ready,
Get yer glad rags on,
For there's going to be a meeting
In the good old town.

Every town in America is a good old town, and on such occasions as Decoration Day you may always hear the worthies of the place giving their reminiscences in the lounge of a hotel. I sat and listened to many.

We had a very quiet morning, and it seemed to me there was considerable boredom in the town. There was a fire in the Opera House about eleven, and I ran behind the scenes with a crowd of others and stared at the smoking walls. There was a sort of disappointment that the firemen put it out so promptly.

But after dinner the real holiday commenced, and the houses began to empty and the streets began to fill. About four o'clock the "Parade" commenced, what we should in England call a procession. Every one who owned a car had it out, carrying roses and ferns and flags. There was a continual hooting and coughing of motor-horns, and an increasing buzz of talk. The "Eighth Regimental Band" appeared, and stood with their instruments in the roadway, chatting to passers-by and being admired. The firemen came with new hats on--their work at the Opera House happily concluded. They now bore on their shoulders wreaths, which were to be carried to the graves of the heroes in the cemetery outside the town. The High School band formed up. A tall man brought a new-bought banner of the Stars and Stripes, which hung from a bird-headed pole. Boy Scouts came in costume--as it were in the rags of the war. The marching order was formed, and then came up what I thought to be the Town Militia, but which turned out to be the representatives of the Mechanics Union, with special decorations and medals on their breasts. The bands began to play; the automobiles, full of flowers and flags, began to cough and shoot forward; the flocks of promenaders on the side-walk and in the roadway set themselves to march in step to the festal music. I watched the whole procession, from the Eighth Regimental Band that went first to the eight veterans of the Spanish War, who, with muskets on their shoulders, took up the rear. I stopped several people in the procession and asked them who they were, what exactly was their rôle, for what reason were they decorated with medals,--and every one was glad to satisfy my curiosity. I found that the eight veterans considered themselves technically a squad, and their function was to fire a salute over the graves of the "heroes."

The procession marched round the town to the strains of "Onward, Christian soldiers" and "O come, all ye faithful." All the people of Clearfield accompanied--Americans, Poles, Ruthenians, Slovaks--for Clearfield has its foreign mining population as well as its Anglo-Saxon urban Americans. As I was going alongside, a young boy ran up and put his hand on my shoulder and addressed me in Polish.

"What's that you say?" I asked.

"Vairy good!" said he, and pointed to the procession. "I like it."

"What are you,--Ruthenian, Polish?" I asked.

"Slavish."

I spoke to him in Russian.

"Oh-ho, he-he, da-da, I thought you were a Polak."