I was really in a foreign land still; yet how everything about made me think of the fatherland from which I had been so long absent. The wooden sidewalk drumming under my boots; the cozy houses, roofed with shingles instead of tiles, and each standing far back from the street on its own green lawn; the tinkle of cow-bells in neighboring pastures—a hundred little unimportances, that I had hardly noticed when I lived among them, stood forth to call up memories of the years gone by. In Victoria each passer-by seemed like a long-lost friend, so familiar did each look in face, clothing, and actions. All that day, as often as I heard a voice behind me, I whirled about and stared at the speaker, utterly astonished that he should be speaking English.
I caught the night boat for Seattle, and landed at midnight in my native land, after an absence of four hundred and sixty-six days.
For two days following I did little but sleep. Then I boarded a train one evening to continue eastward, landing in Spokane the second night thereafter. My wages as a seaman being nearly spent, I stopped a week in Spokane, where I helped build cement sidewalks. At the end of that time I shipped as a railway laborer to Paola, Montana.
The train halted at midnight at the station named ——, a lonely shanty in a wild mountain gorge.
The next morning I went on to Havre. While stepping from one of its restaurants, a ranchman accosted me. He put me in charge of seven carloads of cattle, and when night fell I was speeding eastward again.
Six days later I turned the animals over to the tender mercies of a packing-house in Chicago, and on the morning of October fourteenth walked into the home of my parents.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- Changed “Sidra” to “Sidon” on p. [92].
- Silently corrected typographical errors.
- Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.