“Sorry, kid,” he muttered. “Buffalo’s best thing in the ring for a week or more. Good day, sonny!”
“But I’ll take the chance to Buffalo,” I gasped, fearful that he would turn me off entirely. “I’ll be very thankful for that much of a ride, sir.”
He opened a drawer and wrote several items on a yellow way bill which he handed to me.
“Shove that in yer pocket and skedaddle, sonny,” he said. “I wish yer joy in yer ejucation, though I don’t in hang know what ye’ll do with it when yer got it; plant corn, in all likelihood. S’long! Train leaves at half-past six: freight yard. Numbers of the cars on the pass!”
At six o’clock I appeared in the terminal freight yards with a bag of three-cent egg sandwiches under one arm and with my slate-colored suit-case bumping against my shins. It was not until I reached the yards and beheld the illimitable maze of tracks and the innumerable dragon-like trains of freight cars and the hive of busy, shifting engines that were making up trains, that I realized how wise I had been by coming a half hour early. I asked a switchman where I should find the freight which left for Buffalo at half-past six. Then I realized still more acutely that my difficulties were only begun, for after he had whirled the lever over and allowed the section of shunted cars to rattle past, he turned to me and with a very decided and pugilistic gesture, asked me if I would not immediately consign myself and all my ancestors to a very negative theological place. I stumbled over the switches and as I went felt the hot, resentful glare of the railroad crews, as they refused me the information I sought and spiced their refusals with peppery idioms. They would have buffeted me had I not been armed by the pass. Finally, knowing that I was in danger of losing my train, I entered the switch-house and after I had gulped a stomachful of pipe-smoke, one of the men told me that I should find the train if I would look for the numbers of the cars which were written on the pass. So I went out in the dim twilight and tried to match numbers, which to my startled, nervous imagination looked like 54679900993259 and 563780533255555555573275, but which, in reality, were an inch or two shorter! Finally I found the two numbers, and then I eagerly ran down the length of the train until I came to the caboose. I climbed up the steps, opened the dusty door and was immediately greeted by the angry gaze of the conductor and brakemen who were busy with some sort of schedules.
As I humbly presented my pass to the conductor, and when it was made known to the crew that I was to be their guest in the comfortable caboose, they immediately gave me a lurid and explicit welcome: one that made me shiver. Genealogical connections of a hitherto unknown nature were ascribed to me; to them I appeared as one of the brood of imps from that negative theological place, and various exciting and blood-bringing adjectives were loaded on me that made my flesh quiver. The conductor, after generously and minutely explaining how undesirable was my presence in that caboose, going into the minutest details of my personal limitations, sent me, shuddering, over to the opposite side of the car, as far away as possible from his presence, where I found a padded window seat which was to be my bed overnight.
When the train started, and the crew were sitting around with nothing to do, I tried to enter into conversation with one of them. But I was persona non grata; of a different caste, I was told to “hang my lip on the clothes-hook,” a grewsome feat and quite a poetic conception. The window, a little square one, was high above my head. I stood on the seat in the attempt to look through it into the night. Immediately I was told to “switch off.” Then I made myself comfortable for the night by spreading myself at full length on the seat. After a time, the fumes of the lamp drugged me into a doze, and then the thunder of the freight and the dull, dull rumble of the train crew’s voices sent me off into a fretful, but long sleep. In the morning, when I opened my eyes, and looked out of the back door window, we were passing stations in Ohio. The morning was very pleasant, and thinking that a whole night of my presence might have made the train crew tolerant, I ascended into the lookout, above the roof of the caboose, where, from the cushioned seat, I could make a splendid observation of country through which we were passing. But my joy was short-lived. Immediately the thunders of the conductor called me down and I was sternly ordered to “sit down where you belong,” a command which was followed by a descriptive phrase which linked me to a low and disreputable order of creation.
By nine o’clock we brought up in the Cleveland yards, where a new caboose and a new train were to be fastened to the freight. I was told to “grab” my belongings and “git the-twelfth-letter-of-the-alphabet out of this!” which I did, and found, when I got to the ground, that the freight train had gone off and left the caboose standing in the yard. Then I went on a frightful, heart-thumping search for the two cars with the long numbers on them: not spending any time to be rebuffed by the yard men. I leaped from track to track and searched car after car until, at last, I found the numbers I wanted, and by following out the length of the train, came to the new caboose.
In this second caboose I resolved not to irritate the crew, and to this end I made myself comfortable in my allotted place, took off my boots, put on a pair of tennis shoes, and read a book I had in my suit-case. When the train finally entered the Buffalo freight yards I was hurried out, as the conductor wanted to lock the caboose without the loss of a minute. When I got to the ground, in my hurry, and after the conductor had locked the door and left me standing dazed, I found that I had left my shoes in the caboose. But no amount of search for the conductor succeeded, and finally one of the railroad men told me that I might as well give up the search, especially as the caboose had been whirled out of sight by a switching engine. So I went into the city with my suit-case and my lean purse, determined to visit the sales stables and stock-yards, until I should find a chance to ride on to New York City. I realized that if I should ever arrive in New York I should not have enough money to carry me home, but I followed a blind instinct which seemed to tell me that, New York attained, “something would turn up.”
In one of the back streets of Buffalo I found a Temperance Hotel, where beds and rooms were fifteen cents a day. The hotel had in its frowsy lobby a group of unkempt men who seemed to be temperate in one thing more strikingly than another,—work, for during any part of the day I found them there tipped back in the chairs holding their conferences on momentous matters. I left my umbrella with the clerk for collateral, and told him that further security for my board would be my suit-case which was certainly worth thirty-five cents. I had a good thirty-cent dinner in the dining-room, and then went out to visit the stock-yards of the city.