TO AMERICA AS AN IMMIGRANT
The company's coal steamer brought me safely to Tromso. What a wonderful transformation had taken place during my two months' absence. Tromso had discarded her dreary winter garments and was now arrayed in a mantle of summer gladness. Her gentle slopes were covered with green grass and myriads of little wild flowers literally danced as they thrust their tiny faces towards the deep blue sky. Trees were in leaf, the air was crisp and clear and birds were singing. The atmosphere rang with the joy of summer time and the snow-bound village of the winter was a glorious symphony of beauty and happiness. I wanted to remain there the rest of my life.
But I was now homeward bound. My whole object was to reach Toronto, where I was to meet my father, by the quickest and cheapest route.
It was my plan to go by train through Sweden to Stockholm. My steamer for Narvik, the beginning of the railroad, did not leave for a day, during which I remained in Tromso. That evening I spent with several of my Norwegian friends at the Grand Hotel eating, drinking and making merry. In the midst of our good time, about ten o'clock, one of the bell boys presented me with a note. This little communication was from one of Norway's many Mr. Ole Olesens. This particular Ole Olesen was one of Tromso's butchers, from whom the company had purchased most of the meat for the mine. He was showing me a courtesy by asking me to go fishing with him about midnight. To engage in such a pastime at such an hour struck me as an odd thing to do. With the assistance of one of my native friends I wrote Mr. Olesen a cordial note—declining.
Anyway, I had another engagement for the rest of the evening. I called on the wife of a Norwegian army captain and a woman companion of hers. Her husband was in Christiania, two thousands miles away. On a previous occasion the captain's wife had told me through an interpreter that I was the finest man she ever knew. This sort of flummery was new stuff to me. Making love through an interpreter is a very unsatisfactory process, even if it is to another man's wife.
Whatever admiration this woman may have had for me was completely dispelled, I thought, by the displeasure she manifested on the occasion of this call. I had some difficulty in ascertaining what her grievance was, but finally learned that she was provoked at the method I had pursued in entering her house. I couldn't find the gate in front of her residence, so I climbed over the fence. My object was to get in and I had no time to spend searching for gates if such entrances were not in the places they should be. To climb over a fence at eleven o'clock at night in the light of the midnight sun was a fearful breach of Norwegian good form. What would the neighbours say to see a man entering her house in this strange manner at such an hour, when her husband was away? I left her house, disgraced.
I was on board the steamer for Narvik. The boat was swinging away from the Tromso pier. My displeased friend of the night before came running down the street to bid me farewell. By the time she reached the wharf I was beyond speaking distance—my boat was out in the stream. We could do nothing but wave handkerchiefs. I waved until my arms were tired and the lady was out of sight. I borrowed a pair of field glasses, and as long as I could see the poor woman continued waving. She may be waving yet. She had forgiven me for the fence episode. Hers was the first broken heart I had left behind me on the whole trip.
A dreary journey in a third-class compartment of a Swedish train brought me from Narvik to Stockholm. I saw this beautiful city as a real tourist. I was a comparatively rich man with the money I had earned in Tromso and Spitzbergen, and I lavished it rather extravagantly in an effort to crowd the interesting points of Stockholm into a short time.