With Poor Immigrants to America

by Stephen Graham

There were three or four country loungers at the ice-cream bar of the establishment, and a negro was sitting at another table with a tall glass and a straw and a "soda." At my side was what I took to be a piano—very dusty, and with the keyboard out of sight. Suddenly, without any warning, it jumped into music, and thumped out a cake-walk in its interior. It was as if a lot of niggers were doing the dance in an empty room.

I paid no attention, facially. Alas! we are quite familiar with such marvels, with all that can be shown. We raise no eyebrow. But bring in an aboriginal Chinee and sit him there where I was, and start this box a-going, and he'd jump out of his wits. How was it started? Some one went softly across the room and put a cent in a slot—that's all. Is it not maddening to be uninterested, unthrilled? None of us paid any attention. The loungers gossiped with the ice-cream girl, the nigger drew up his soda, I strove with my hard roast beef.

* * * * * * *

St. John's Eve! Unusual things might be expected to happen this night. I had lived with the growing summer, had caught in my hands one evening not long since a large dusky lovely emperor-moth, and had received an invitation from fairyland. The strange thing was that as I tramped out of Angola on the Lagrange Road, it did not occur to me what day it was. Only in the middle of the night did I reflect—there is something unusual astir, something is happening all about me, this is no ordinary night. And only in the morning did I realise it had been St. John's Eve.

I slept by an orchard on a hill. Below me was a little lake, on the right a straw stack, on the left an apple tree, over me a plum tree with wee plums. All night long little apples fell from their weak stalks, the frogs sang—now solos, now choruses, the mosquitoes hummed in the plum tree. On the surface of the little lake little lights appeared and disappeared as the wandering fireflies carried messages from reed to reed. Processions of clouds stole over the starry sky, and I thought of rain, but the whole night was hot and odorous and full of dreams.

I did not awake next morning till it was bright day. Between me and the straw stack there was a fluttering and squawking of young birds being taught to fly by their mother. Every time a young bird alighted after a little flutter, it always fell on its nose. My attention was divided between the birds and a big bee, who thought I had made my bed over his nest. What a distressing way the bumble-bee has of losing himself and thinking you are to blame!

I tramped to the reedy lake of Whip-poor-Will. The wind blew now hot from the sun's mouth, now cold from a cloud's shoulder. The question was, Would the Midsummer day turn to heat or come to rain? It turned to heat. What a day of happiness I spent on the sandy ups and downs of country roads! After weeks among plains, I was glad of a countryside that had corners again. I was among "dear little lakes," the children of the great lakes—in the nursery.

I came to Flint, and met the "pike road" from Detroit to Chicago. Flint has a large general store and a barber's shop. I bought three oranges out of the refrigerator of the store, and, to make them last longer, half a pound of honey-cakes.

At noon I made my mid-day fire in the bed of a dried-up rivulet. The weather was almost too hot for tending a fire; tawny spots appeared on my wrists, and, viewing my face in the metal back of my soapbox, I was startled to see the fire in my eyebrows and cheeks. But with the heat there was a wind, and in the afternoon great cumuli grew up in the sky, and it was possible to think the earth was a ship and the clouds the billows which we were rolling over. Up hill and down dale, round corners, by snug farms with green and crimson cherry orchards, over hills where miles of corn were blanching and waving! I came to Brushy Prairie and camped for the night in an angle of the road beside the village cemetery.

I read and wrote, mended my clothes, cleaned my pack of waste dust, collected hay to make a bed. Many carts came past, and the people in them hailed me with facetious remarks. After I had lain down one old village wife came to see if I were sick and wanted medicine. It was strange to lie by the cemetery and hear a party of girls go by in a buggy, singing, "When the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there."