"We get it most likely for nothing, because it's Sunday," said Peter with a smile.
The Americans are much more hospitable on Sundays than on week days. They do not, however, like to see you tramping the road on the day of rest; it is thought to be an infraction of the Sabbath—though it is difficult to see what tramps can do but tramp on a Sunday.
We had a splendid breakfast for ten cents apiece at a stock-breeding farm below Luthersburg,—pork and beans, bread and butter and cookies, strawberry jam and home-canned plums, pear-jelly. I thanked the lady of the establishment when we had finished, and remarked that I thought it very cheap at the price. She answered that she didn't serve out lunches for a profit, but wouldn't let decent men pass hungry.
"Are you hiking to the next burg?" she asked.
"Chicago," said I.
"Gee!"
We came to Luthersburg, high up on the crest of the hills, a large village, with two severe-looking churches.
"When I see these narrow spires I'm afraid," said the Bulgarian. "I should have to wither my soul and make it small to get into one of these churches. I like a church with walls of praise and a spire of yearning,—Tolstoy, eh? That spire says to me 'I feared Thee, O God, because Thou art an austere man.'"
I, for my part, thought it strange that Americans, taking so many risks in business, and daring and imagining so large-heartedly in the secular world, should be satisfied with so cramped an expression of their religion.
Peter and I went down on the other side of the hills to Helvetia, the first town in a wild coaling district, a place of many Austrians, Poles, and Huns. It was the Sunday evening promenade, and every one was out of doors, hundreds of miners and labourers in straight-creased trousers (how soon obtained) and cheap felt hats, a similar number of dark, interesting-looking Polish girls in their gaudy Sunday best. We passed a hundred yards of grey coke-ovens glowing at all their doors and emitting hundreds of fires and flames. Peter seemed unusually attracted by the coke-ovens or by the Slav population, and he decided to remain at Helvetia and seek for a job on the morrow. So I accompanied him into a "boarding-house," and was ready to spend the night with him. But when I saw the accommodation of coaly beds I cried off. So the Bulgarian and I parted. I went on to Sykesville and the Hotel Sykes. Obviously I was in America,—fancy calling a hotel in England "Hotel Sykes." But I did not stay there, preferring to hasten up country and get a long step beyond black breaker-towers, the sooty inclines up which trucks ran from the mines, the coke-ovens, the fields full of black stumps and rotting grass, the seemingly poverty-stricken frame-buildings, and more dirt and misery than you would see even in a bad district in Russia. It surprised me to see the Sunday clothes of Sykesville, the white collars, the bright red ties, the blue serge trousers with creases, the bowler hats, and American smiles. Despite all the dirt, these new-come immigrants say Yes to American life and American hopes. But to my eyes it was a terrible place in which to live. It was an astonishing change, moreover, to pass from the magnificent loveliness of the Susquehanna gorges to this inferno of a colliery. But I managed to pass out of this region almost as quickly as I came into it, and next day was in the lovely country about Reynoldsville; and I tramped through beautiful agricultural or forested country to the bright towns of Brookville, Clarion, and Shippenville, clean, new, handsome settlements, with green lawns, shady avenues, fine houses, and well-stocked shops. In such places I saw America at its best, just as at Helvetia and Sykesville I saw it at about its worst. I suppose Sykesville will never be made as beautiful as Brookville; the one is the coal-cellar, the other is the drawing-room in the house of modern America.