Part 26 (1/2)
Gratefully sinking into a chair by the window, I fell into study of the people streaming by, and a chilling sense of helplessness fell upon me.
I realized my ignorance, my feebleness. As a minute bubble in this torrent of human life, with no friend in whom I could put trust, and with only a handful of silver between myself and the gray wolf, I lost confidence. The Boston trip seemed a foolish tempting of Providence and yet, scared as I was, I had no real intention of giving it up.
My brother's first words as he entered the door, were gayly derisive.
”Oh, see the whiskers!” he cried and his calm acceptance of my plan restored my own courage.
Together we planned our itinerary. We were to see Niagara Falls, of course, but to spend the fourth of July on Boston Common, was our true objective. ”When our money is used up,” I said, ”we'll strike out into the country.”
To all this my brother agreed. Neither of us had the slightest fear of hunger in the country. It was the city that gave us pause.
All the afternoon and evening we wandered about the streets (being very careful not to go too far from our hotel), counting the stories of the tall buildings, and absorbing the drama of the pavement. Returning now and again to our sanctuary in the hotel lobby we ruminated and rested our weary feet.
Everything interested us. The business section so sordid to others was grandly terrifying to us. The self-absorption of the men, the calm glances of the women humbled our simple souls. Nothing was commonplace, nothing was ugly to us.
We slept that night in a room at the extreme top of the hotel. It couldn't have been a first cla.s.s accommodation, for the frame of the bed fell in the moment we got into it, but we made no complaint--we would not have had the clerk know of our mishap for twice our bill. We merely spread the mattress on the floor and slept till morning.
Having secured our transportation we were eager to be off, but as our tickets were second cla.s.s, and good only on certain trains, we waited.
We did not even think of a sleeping car. We had never known anyone rich enough to occupy one. Grant and Edwin Booth probably did, and senators were ceremonially obliged to do so, but ordinary folks never looked forward to such luxury. Neither of us would have known what to do with a berth if it had been presented to us, and the thought of spending two dollars for a night's sleep made the cold chills run over us. We knew of no easier way to earn two dollars than to save them, therefore we rode in the smoker.
Late that night as we were sitting stoically in our places, a brakeman came along and having sized us up for the innocents we were, good-naturedly said, ”Boys, if you'll get up I'll fix your seats so's you can lie down and catch a little sleep.”
Silently, gratefully we watched him while he took up the cus.h.i.+ons and turned them lengthwise, thus making a couch. To be sure, it was a very short and very hard bed but with the health and strength of nineteen and twenty-two, we curled up and slept the remainder of the night like soldiers resting on their guns. Pain, we understood, was an unavoidable accompaniment of travel.
When morning dawned the train was running through Canada, and excitedly calling upon Franklin to rouse, I peered from the window, expecting to see a land entirely different from Wisconsin and Illinois. We were both somewhat disappointed to find nothing distinctive in either the land or its inhabitants. However, it was a foreign soil and we had seen it. So much of our exploration was accomplished.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when we came in sight of the suspension bridge and Niagara Falls. I suppose it would be impossible for anyone now to feel the same profound interest in any natural phenomenon whatsoever. We believed that we were approaching the most stupendous natural wonder in all the world, and we could scarcely credit the marvel of our good fortune.
All our lives we had heard of this colossal cataract. Our school readers contained stately poems and philosophical dissertations concerning it.
Gough, the great orator, had pointed out the likeness of its resistless torrent to the habit of using spirituous liquors. The newspapers still printed descriptions of its splendor and no foreigner (so we understood) ever came to these sh.o.r.es without visiting and bowing humbly before the voice of its waters.--And to think that we, poor prairie boys, were soon to stand upon the ill.u.s.trious brink of that dread chasm and listen to its mighty song was wonderful, incredible, benumbing!
Alighting at the squalid little station on the American side, we went to the cheapest hotel our keen eyes could discover, and leaving our valises, we struck out immediately toward the towering white column of mist which could be seen rising like a ghostly banner behind the trees.
We were like those who first discover a continent.
As we crept nearer, the shuddering roar deepened, and our awe, our admiration, our patriotism deepened with it, and when at last we leaned against the rail and looked across the tossing spread of river swiftly sweeping to its fall, we held our breaths in wonder. It met our expectations.
Of course we went below and spent two of our hard-earned dollars in order to be taken behind the falls. We were smothered with spray and forced to cling frenziedly to the hands of our guide, but it was a part of our duty, and we did it. No one could rob us of the glory of having adventured so far.
That night we resumed our seats in the smoking car, and pushed on toward Boston in patiently-endured discomfort. Early the following morning we crossed the Hudson, and as the Berks.h.i.+re hills began to loom against the dawn, I asked the brakeman, with much emotion, ”Have we reached the Ma.s.sachusetts line?” ”We have,” he said, and by pressing my nose against the gla.s.s and shading my face with my hands I was able to note the pa.s.sing landscape.
Little could be seen other than a tumbled, stormy sky with wooded heights dimly outlined against it, but I had all the emotions of a pilgrim entering upon some storied oriental vale. Ma.s.sachusetts to me meant Whittier and Hawthorne and Wendell Phillips and Daniel Webster. It was the cradle of our liberty, the home of literature, the province of art--and it contained Boston!
As the sun rose, both of us sat with eyes fixed upon the scenery, observant of every feature. It was all so strange, yet familiar! Barns with long, sloping roofs stood with their backs against the hillsides, precisely as in the ill.u.s.trations to Hawthorne's stories, and Whittier's poems. The farm-houses, old and weather-beaten and guarded by giant elms, looked as if they might have sheltered Emerson and Lowell. The little villages with narrow streets lined with queer brick-walled houses (their sides to the gutter) reminded us of the pictures in Ben Franklin's _Autobiography_.
Everything was old, delightfully old. Nothing was new.--Most of the people we saw were old. The men working in the fields were bent and gray, scarcely a child appeared, though elderly women abounded. (This was thirty-five years ago, before the Canadians and Italians had begun to swarm). Everywhere we detected signs of the historical, the traditional, the Yankee. The names of the stations rang in our ears like bells, _Lexington_, _Concord_, _Cambridge_, _Charlestown_, and--at last _Boston_!
What a strange, new world this ancient city was to us, as we issued from the old Hoosac Tunnel station! The intersection of every street was a bit of history. The houses standing sidewise to the gutter, the narrow, ledge-like pavements, the awkward two-wheeled drays and carts, the men selling lobsters on the corner, the newsboys with their ”papahs,” the faces of the women so thin and pale, the men, neat, dapper, small, many of them walking with finicky precision as though treading on eggs,--everything had a Yankee tang, a special quality, and then, the noise! We had thought Chicago noisy, and so it was, but here the clamor was high-keyed, deafening for the reason that the rain-washed streets were paved with cobble stones over which enormous carts b.u.mped and clattered with resounding riot.
Bewildered,--with eyes and ears alert, we toiled up Haymarket Square shoulder to shoulder, seeking the Common. Of course we carried our hand-bags--(the railway had no parcel rooms in those days, or if it had we didn't know it) clinging to them like ants to their eggs and so slowly explored Tremont Street. Cornhill entranced us with its amazing curve. We pa.s.sed the Granary Burying Ground and King's Chapel with awe, and so came to rest at last on the upper end of the Common! We had reached the goal of our long pilgrimage.