As the weather was very hot I took a wayside seat erected by a firm of clothiers to advertise their wares, and it somewhat amused me to think that as I sat in my somewhat ragged and dust-stained attire the seat seemed to say I bought my suit at Clayton's. As I sat there six Boy Scouts came tramping past, walking home from their camping-ground, boys of twelve or thirteen, all carrying saucepans and kettles, one of them a bag of medical appliances and medicines, all with heavy blankets—sun-browned, happy little bodies.
There is all manner of interest on the road. The gleaming, red-headed woodpecker that I watch alights on the side of the telegraph-pole, looks at the wood as at a mirror, and then, to my mild surprise, goes right into the pole. There must be a hole there and a nest. I hear the guzzling of the little woodpeckers within. Upon reflection, I remember that the mother's beak was disparted, and there was something between. Rather amusing, a woodpecker living in a telegraph-pole—Nature taking advantage of civilisation!
Then there are many squirrels in the woods by the road, and they wag their tails when they squeak.
At tea-time, by the lake shore, a beautiful white-breasted but speckled snipe tripped around the sand, showing me his round head, plump body, and dainty legs. He had his worms and water, I my bread and tea; we were equals in a way.
Then after tea I caught a little blind mouse, no bigger than my thumb, held him in my hand, and put him in his probable hole.
As I rested by a railway arch Johnny Kishman, a fat German boy, got off his bicycle to find out what manner of man I was. His chief interest was to find out how much money I made by walking. And I flabbergasted him.
I came into Huron by a road of coal-dust, and left the beautiful countryside once more for another industrial inferno. Here were many cranes, black iron bridges, evil smells, an odorous, green river. There was a continuous noise as of three rolls of thunder in one from the machinery of the port. I stopped a party of Slavs, who were strolling out of the town to the strains of an accordion, and asked them by what the noise was made. I was informed it was the lading of Pennsylvanian coal and the unlading of Wisconsin and Canadian ore, the tipping of five to ten tons at a time into the holds of coal boats or into trucks of freight trains.
I went into a restaurant in the dreary town, and there, over an ice-cream, chatted with an American, who hoped I would lick Jack London and Gibson and the rest of them "to a frazzle." A girl, who came into the shop, told me that last year she wanted to walk to Chicago and sleep out, but could not get a companion—a chance for me to step in. Mine host was one of these waggish commercial men in whom America abounds, and he had posted above his bar:
ELEVEN MEN WHO ASKED
CREDIT
LIE DEAD IN MY CELLAR
But he made good ice-cream.