Chapter I. Fifteen Dollars and
Sixty-five Cents Worth of International
Travel. An Inspiring
Reception in Front of Chief Pungo
Memorial Hall
IT was like taking off an old, worn, unadorning suit of clothes as the Boston Express whirled me away from the City of Mills. It hummed with me over the streets on which I had walked to and from work as a mill boy. It darted me past the rows of tenements where sordid and sinful memories lingered. “Thank God! Thank God!” Out and away from it all. Away from the hum, the bee-like, monotonous hum of the mill machines that overpower the nerves and dull the spirit of the workers! Away from the bells and blaring fog whistles that disturb the sleep of tired, weary, discouraged toilers; the bells and whistles that sometimes mean the jubilant clamor of the mills over their moaning, rebellious workers. Past the pale faces that waited at the crossings for the train to pass; faces whose eyes gleamed with an instant’s wish that the train had them in it, too! Yes, I was the chosen from among over twenty thousand workers that day. I was actually on my way to seek an education! There, for proof that it was no dream, was my long green ticket with its dozen coupons in my hands! There was my brand new suit-case! How lucky I was! Think of the fellows who had better mental furnishing than I, who had even money in the bank, parents who were urging them to strive for an education, friends who would loan them money, and yet, they were going to the mill at that very moment, and would go tomorrow, and the day after, because they were afraid to make the break! Then I thought: “Well, they would have made the break long ago if they had lived with an aunt and uncle who wasted their money on drink. That would frighten them into it. There’s some good in evil after all. I shouldn’t be on this train today if my foster parents had been kinder, more considerate! I guess it’d be a good thing if a few of the other mill fellows, who are ambitious, had something like it to frighten them off. It’s probably the only way they’ll go out and make their chance!”
Then the vision of the country-side, painted in the glories of Autumn, the flashing views of cranberry bogs, crowded with sun-bonneted pickers, called my mind to the new joys of existence. Here I was, out in the world at last! Not the romp of a holiday, with the mill room for next morning, not a vacation of two days with a return at the end of it; but the beginning of an education, a start towards a profession, a great big chance at last to “make something of myself!”
“Here,” I said to the train boy, as he was about to pass me, “give me a packet of that there gum—the peppermint sort.” That train boy didn’t know, as I paid him the five cents by giving him a dollar bill to change, that the purchase was the greatest luxury I should have on that trip of fifteen hundred miles.
While working in the mill, I had never been able to afford a trip to Boston, so when I arrived in the station, and realized that I was even going beyond it, on my first excursion, I said to myself, “Boston is only the first, small step in your travel!” The next coupon on my long ticket paid my fare from the South Station to the North—in a Cab with a Uniformed Driver!! It was the first time I had been in a cab, except at a funeral. I was pleased when the driver took me through the main streets; glad when he had to move cautiously through congested traffic, because people could see me, as I sat nonchalantly in the cab. I took care to see that the blinds were up as far as possible.
In the North Station, when the cab driver had taken me to the train, the car that I was to travel on, to Montreal, was marked off from its fellows by its salmon color. Awed, impressed, I went groping through the dim car until I found a vacant seat into which I comfortably arranged myself. But as the train pulled out, I studied my railroad map, and, on discovering that the Green Mountains would be on the opposite side of the railroad, I made haste to change my seat, so that I might insure myself a view of them; for I had never seen a mountain in my life.
That ride of twelve hours, on an express, did not tire me one bit. I was before the world with a starved, hungry mind and starved, hungry eyes. I kept my eyes glued on the out-of-doors. Yes, I watched both sides of the car at once. I listened for the comments around me and if anything of interest was mentioned I bobbed up my head to look. I watched the time-table for the stations so that I might know when the train passed from one state to another I was actually passing through whole states—five of them in all! Five states of the United States of America! There were few details that I did not observe. I watched the farms, the villages, the back yards of cities; watched the flying trees, the colors of soil, the crops that were being reaped, the winding roads, and the vehicles that waited for us at the country crossings.
At noon we were lumbering through the streets of Manchester, N.H., past the long canal which flows like a sluggish moat along the dismal wall of the mill. Crowds of workers were waiting for us at the crossings; watching us with looks of envy, I thought. I threw up my window, leaned back in my seat, and ostentatiously chewed gum with a smug, proud look, with which I hoped to show the mill boys how unconcerned I was about being a passenger on a Montreal Express!
It was not until we had cleared the big cotton factory towns and cities of New England that I felt entirely like an adventurer, however. Only by the time the cities had been left, the big cities, and the small towns were succeeded by country villages, and the country villages by vast wildernesses of woods and uncultivated fields, did I feel satisfied. Then I knew that if a train wreck should end my journeying, I could settle down on some farm. I should not have to go back into the mill.