"Your best way of going into Boston is through Charlestown," he said. "When you get about three miles this side of Boston look out for a red house on the left of the road, with a clump of trees around it, and ask if that is where Mr. Johnson lives. Tell him you spent the night with me, my name is Samuel Bickford, and I recommended you to him. He may have the same suspicion of you as I had, and you can satisfy him just as you satisfied me as to your character, and you can convince him that you passed the night at my house by describing the place and the folks in it."
We thanked him very kindly for his advice, and promised that if it ever came in our way we would certainly make a return for his hospitality. I little thought at that time that the opportunity would ever arrive, and certainly I did not, in my wildest dreams, imagine the way in which it would come about.
As I look back now to our reception at this house, I take great credit to David and myself that we made such a favorable impression on our host.
It was then about seventeen years since the close of the Revolutionary War, and during all this time the country had been overrun by idle fellows who served in the army, and after the disbandment of the troops took to a wandering, and, in many cases, a dissolute, life. They tramped along the principal highways, and, in fact, over pretty nearly all the roads of New England. They begged their food and lodging, though more frequently they stole the lodging outright, as they slept in barns without troubling themselves to ask the privilege of doing so.
As the years rolled on their number decreased, but at the time of which I write they were quite numerous, and in winter filled the jails and poor-houses to over-flowing. Like ourselves, they had an aversion to winter travel, but started out in the spring. You will remember that we left home in the spring, and consequently were beginning our journeys at the same time as these tramping idlers began theirs.
They pretended to be seeking work, but were careful never to find it. In summer they wanted a job at shoveling snow, and in winter professed to be hay-makers. People living along the highways had suffered much from the beggary and depredation of this class of individuals, and consequently it is more the wonder that our host so readily accepted our story and gave us the hospitality of his house. It must have been that the frank and honest faces of David and myself served as our passports on that occasion.
We found Mr. Johnson's house without difficulty, were received at first in the same suspicious manner as on the night before, and afterwards with the same open-handed hospitality. In the morning we walked rapidly into Boston, and, not knowing where to go, headed straight for the water-front and the ships that lay there.
As we crossed the bridge from Charlestown to Boston, our curiosity was roused at the sight of the vessels anchored in the harbor or lying at the piers. We had never before seen a ship; the largest floating craft of any kind that had ever greeted our eyes were the row-boats on the Merrimac River, and the cargo-boats that plied occasionally between the falls along that stream. Neither kind of craft was numerous, and all were the merest pigmies compared with the vessels we saw after we reached Boston.
As we stood looking at a ship at the head of one of the wharves, a man came up and spoke to us. He asked who we were, and where we had come from; to both of which questions we promptly replied. Then he said,—
"I suppose you've come to Boston to find a ship, haven't you?"