I once saw a boy of fourteen on the prairies of Kansas transformed into a man, between the rising of the sun and its setting. His father was crushed beneath a wagon that sluiced and toppled in crossing a gully. The hub caught the poor man square on the chest, and after we got him out he never spoke. Six children and the mother were left, the oldest boy being fourteen. A grave was dug there on the prairie the next day, and this boy of fourteen patted down the earth over his father's grave, with the back of a spade. He then hitched up the horses, rounded up the cattle, and headed the cavalcade for the West. He was a man, and in after-life he proved himself one.
On the death of his father, Jim Hill's schooldays were done. His aptitude in mathematics, his ability to keep accounts, and his general disposition to make himself useful secured him a place in the village store, which was also the Post-Office. His pay was one dollar a week. This training in the country store proved of great value, just as it did in the case of H. H. Rogers, George Peabody and so many other men of mark.
It is one thing to get a job, and another to hold it. Jim Hill held his job, and his salary was raised before the end of the first year to three dollars a week.
On the strength of this prosperity, the struggle on the old farm with its stumps, boulders and mortgage was given up and the widow moved her little brood to town. The log house on the rambling main street of the village is now pointed out to visitors. Here the mother sewed for neighbors, took in washing, made garden, and with the help of her boy Jim, grew happy and fairly prosperous: more prosperous than the family had ever been. Thus matters went on until Jim was in his eighteenth year, when the wanderlust got hold of the young man. His mother saw it coming and being wise did not apply the brake.
Man is a migrating animal. To sit still and stay in one place is to vegetate.
Jim with twenty dollars in his pocket started for Toronto on foot with a bundle on a stick, followed by the prayers of his mother, the gaping wonder of the children, and the blessing of Professor Wetherald. Toronto was interesting, but too near home to think of as a permanent stopping-place. A leaky little steamer ran over to Fort Niagara every other day. Jim took passage, reached the foreign shore, walked up to Niagara Falls, and the next day tramped on to Buffalo. This was in the wonderful year of Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six, the year the Republican Party was born at Bloomington, Illinois. It was a time of unrest, of a healthy discontent and goodly prosperity, for things were in motion. The docks at Buffalo were all a-bustle with emigrants going West—forever West.
Jim Hill, aged eighteen, strong, healthy, farmer boy, lumberman, clerk, shipped as roustabout on a schooner bound for Chicago. His pay for the round trip was to be ten dollars and board, the money payable when the boat got back to Buffalo. If he left the ship at Chicago, he was to get no cash.
The boat reached Chicago in ten days. It was a great trip—full of mild adventure and lots of things that would have surprised the folks at Rockford. Jim got a job on the docks as checker-off, or understudy to a freight-clerk. The pay was a dollar a day. He now sent his original twenty dollars back to his mother to prove to her that he was prosperous and money was but a bagatelle and a burden. A month, and he had joined the ever-moving westward tide. He was headed for California, the land of shining nuggets and rainbow hopes. He reached Rock Island, and saw a sign out at a sawmill, "Men Wanted." He knew the business and was given work on sight. In a week his mathematics came in handy and he was handed a lumber-rule and a blank-book.
Mr. Hill yet recalls his first sight of a Mississippi River steamboat coming into Davenport. The tall smokestacks belching fire, the graceful, swanlike motion, the marvelous beauty of the superstructure, the wonderful letter "D" in gold, or something that looked like gold, swung between the stacks! It was just dusk, and as the boat glided in toward the shore, a big torch was set ablaze, the gang-plank was run out to the weird song of the colored deckhands, and miracle and fairyland arrived. For a month whenever a steamboat blew its siren whistle, Jim was on the wharf, open-mouthed, gaping, wondering, admiring. One day he could stand it no longer. He threw up his job and took passage on the sailing palace, "Molly Devine," for Dubuque. Here he changed boats, and boarded a smaller vessel, a stern-wheeler, deck passage for Saint Paul, a point which seemed to the young man somewhere near the North Pole.
He was going to get his fill of steamboat-riding for once at least. It was his intention to remain at Saint Paul a couple of days, see Saint Anthony's Falls and Minnehaha, and then take the same boat back down the river. But something happened that induced him to change his plans.