Two days later I was steaming homeward on a cattle boat. The return trip lasted ten days and the monotony of it soon palled upon me.
[CHAPTER IV.]
The following fall at the University was a trying one for it was darned hard to get back to the studies after such a bully good time tramping over Europe. There wasn't much midnight oil wasted, for I was too full of football. Ten good men were trying for my place on the team, and consequently it took all of my time to hold down left-half on the 'varsity eleven.
Well, I won, and we had some dandy times on the trips that season. Warner, Cornell's old coach, trained us that fall and he had a fine lot of material to pick from. After we had played the Thanksgiving game, with the University of Virginia, I returned home, and remaining there only a few days, departed for Washington, D. C., where I secured a position with the Washington Times.
While at the Naval Academy on a football trip, the year before, I met a young chap by the name of Anderson. He came to Washington in January shortly after being expelled from the Academy for hazing and proposed to me that we two hit it for the West together. This idea struck me in the right place and at the right time, for I had been contemplating another chase over some part of the world. He was from the Naval Academy and I from the University of North Carolina, but then and there we joined forces to matriculate in that larger, but less select college—the University of Experience. I, of course, had had more training in that school than Anderson, but I knew that he'd be game to the last. Of all my experiences, I dare say that not the least adventurous I ever butted into was when in company with Will Anderson, I boarded the train at Washington and began our journey toward the setting sun.
We purchased tickets to St. Louis by way of Chicago at a cut rate price, and landed in the Windy City on a Monday morning. A gloomy looking day it was, too, our joint possessions amounting to thirty cents. After receiving a rebate on our railroad tickets, which amounted to two dollars and fifty cents, we entered a certain restaurant where the waiters neither wear dress suits, nor expect exorbitant perquisites. Each having replenished the inner man with Clarke street dainties, we began our search for something to do, but finding congenial employment proved a much harder task than when we used to tell how to do it back in Washington. We commenced by hitting for such positions as newspaper reporters, office assistants, and the like; we ended by accepting positions?—no, just ordinary jobs, I as a laborer in a lead mill just off Halstead street, while Will answered to "Front," doing the bell hopping act at a north side family hotel. For my work I received one dollar and seventy-five cents a day, and, truly, it was the darnest hardest money I ever earned in all my life. It simply meant lifting big lead bars weighing anywhere from one hundred to two hundred pounds all the day long, that is, from six o'clock in the morning till five in the afternoon with half an hour at noon for lunch. My room and board cost me five dollars a week so at the end of the first six days I had a few dollars in my pocket.
I boarded at a restaurant on Halstead street, and the proprietor of this notorious establishment was formerly a cab driver in Paris. Evenings, after I had finished my work, we two would have long talks about the city of pleasures, for both of us knew the place pretty well, he having lived there the greater part of his life, and I having been there several times. Gee! but this was a tough joint. During my stay there I was afraid of being killed for there were murders taking place around there very frequently, as the scareheads of that date will testify. I could hardly have expected anything better on Halstead street, for those who are acquainted with that particular section of Chicago will tell you that there's scarcely a place on the toughest part of the Bowery that can compare with certain sections of that famous Chicago street.
Anderson acted his part of an old experienced bell hop at the Virginia Hotel on the north side of the city. For this he received seven dollars per week and meals. At night he came to my room on Halstead street and we bunked together. He was usually on duty at night till about ten o'clock, and after finishing his work it would take him about one hour to ride over the city to where we were rooming. It mattered not how tired I was, I would always sit up and await his coming, for it was awfully lonely there by myself. Not wishing to make these exalted positions a life business, in a couple of weeks we "resigned our commissions," donned our happy habiliments and wended our way to a certain mail order establishment, and after much wagging of tongues, finally found ourselves correspondents at $15.00 per. But we didn't care to confine ourselves to stereotyped forms, and much preferred to let our pens wander, and to be original, so, not knowing when we were well off, quit that.