I tramped down to Jersey Shore, and the night after my halcyon day at Williamsport a thunderstorm overtook me, shaking the old barn in which I slept and tearing away rafters and doors. I witnessed Lockhaven under depressing circumstances, but in any weather it must be an inferior town to Williamsport, though it is also an old point for lumbering on the Susquehanna.
The weather remained very rainy, and I was obliged to forsake the atrociously clayey high-road for the cinder track of the railway. In doing this I passed up into a fine hilly country along the valley of the Beech Creek. I came to Mapes (to rhyme with Shapes), but found it a name and no more. A shooting and fishing resort with one house in it. The Beech Creek was a fine sight, running along the base of the embankment of the railway, carrying pine logs on its flood and racing the trains with them, roaring and rushing, the logs pointing, racing, turning, rolling, toppling, colliding, but always going forward, willy-nilly getting clear of every obstacle and galloping out of sight.
With one wet match I lighted a grand fire by the side of the line, and boiled my kettle and dried myself and chuckled. It might be going to rain more. I might be going to have a queer night, but for the time being I was having a splendid tea. It was a matter for consolation in the future that on the wettest possible day it was not difficult to light a fire with one match. The secret lies in having plenty of dry paper in your wallet; and I had a copy of a New York Sunday paper, which lasted me to light my fire all the way to Elkhart, Indiana, at least five hundred miles' tramping.
The district of Mapes is one of the most beauteous in the Alleghanies, or it was so this quiet evening. The summits of the mountains were obscured by mists, but up from the profound valleys the woods climbed, and the lovely tops of trees seemed like so many stepping-stones from the land up to cloudy heaven.
By the time I came to Monument it was dark. But a great glowing brick-kiln looked out into the night, and there were houses with many lighted windows. I was directed to a workmen's boarding-house, and spent a night among miners, railway men, and brick-workers. The keeper of the establishment was doubtful whether he would have me, but thought there was "one feller on the third floor gone."
"What will be your charge?" I asked.
"Well," said he, "a won't charge ye anything for the bed, but the breakfast to-morrow morning will be twenty-five cents."
"My!" I thought, "here's something choice coming along in the shape of a bed."
It turned out to be four in a room and two in a bed, all sleeping in their clothes. There was even some doubt as to whether there was not a fifth coming.
One man was in bed already; I chose the unoccupied bed, and laid myself upon it in full tramping attire. You can imagine the state of sheets and quilts in a bed that brickmakers and soft-coal miners sleep in their clothes.