Every one combined to boost the town and advise me to see this and that. The port machinery and lading operations were the wonder of Erie Shore, and provided work for a great number of Hungarians, Italians, and Slavs. Not so many years back there was no such machinery here, and the work was done with buckets and derricks.
"JOHNNY KISHMAN, A GERMAN BOY, GOT OFF HIS BICYCLE TO FIND OUT WHAT MANNER OF MAN I WAS."
I forebore to have supper at the creditless inn, but as I walked out of the dark town I spied a fire burning on a bit of waste land, and there I boiled my kettle and made coffee. It was an eerie proceeding, and as I sat in the dusk I saw several children come peering at me, hshing the younger ones, and inferring horrible suspicions as to my identity. When I had finished my supper I went down to the beach, and there, on the sand amidst old logs, under a stooping willow tree, I made my bed.
It was a wonderful, placid night after a long, hot day. The smoke-coloured lake was weakly plashing. There was no sign of the past sunset in the west, and smoke seemed to be rising from the darkness of the horizon. The one light on the city pier had its stab of reflection in the water below. Near me, still trees leant over the water. The branches and leaves of the willow under which I slept were delicately figured against the sky as I looked upward, and far away over the lake the faint stars glimmered. The moon stood high in the south, and illumined the surface of the waters and the long coast line of the bay.
When I awoke next morning what a sight! The blue-grey lake so placid, just breathing, that's all, and crimson ripples stealing over it from the illuminated smoky east. It was clear that the smokiness of the horizon came from real smoke—from all the chimneys and stacks of Huron. I saw massed volumes of it hurrying away from the docks and the works, and standing out on the lake like a great wall. As I lay on my spread on the sand, looking out idly with my cheek on my hand, I saw the sun come sailing through the smoke like a red balloon. No celestial sunrise this, but Nature beautifully thwarted.
I made a fire and cooked my breakfast, and sat on a log enjoying it; and all the while the sun strove to be himself and shine in splendour over the new world, whose beauties he himself had called into being. For a whole hour, though there was not a cloud in the sky or a mist on the lake, he made no more progress than on a foggy January morning in London. He gave no warmth to speak of; he was an immaterial, luminous moon.
But at last he got free, and began to rise indeed, exchanging the ragged crimson reflection in the water for a broad-bladed flashing silver dagger. A great glory grew about him; all the wavelets of the far lake knew him and looked up to him with their tiny faces. His messengers searched the horizon for the shadows of night, for all lingering wraiths and mists, and banished them. The smoky door by which the sun had come out of the east was shut after him. But he shed so much light that you could not see the door any longer.