The crowd thickens, the gong strikes, the cheering “all-aboard” of the conductor is heard, and in a few minutes the night express is darting like a meteor through the darkened land.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE EMIGRANT TRAIN.
It seems that when the rain is falling, when the air is chill, when the darkness is deepest and when the great station looks most gloomy and dreary, the emigrant train arrives. As the train draws in and slowly passes me to its allotted space the faces that I see through the dirty windows are tired and worn and the eyes are hollow and sad. I went through an emigrant train one night and I will never forget the experience. The emigrants were chiefly Irish, English and Swedes. Some of them stayed here in Toronto but the majority were bound for points farther west. As I opened the door of the first car a blast of hot, foul air smote me in the face and almost turned me sick, and yet the people whom I saw before me seemed to mind it but little. They were used to it and it was a great improvement on the poisonous atmosphere of the steerage. The car was closely packed, every seat had more than its quota. It was impossible to see to the far end of the car on account of a steam which fermented the place and made the faces of people in the middle of the car look obscure and distorted. The emigrants were in every attitude and conceivable posture; some were lying prone on the floor, others were huddled in the seats, while others, with arms entwined, were resting their heads on each others’ shoulders. One whole family, man and wife and six children, were squeezed into two seats in the most amazing manner. The parents formed a sort of under strata on which the little children were piled promiscuously. They were all asleep,
THEIR ARMS ENTWINED,
their cheeks touching, and their spirits winging through dreamland back to the good land of Sweden far away. Utterly unconscious of their surroundings or of the great city into which they had entered, ignorant of the fact that they had halted at one of the chief stopping places on their journey, they slept on, and as I watched them and saw their lips move and the unintelligible words drop forth, I knew that they spoke of home. One poor man with bowed head was weeping quietly, and I asked him what ailed him.
“Oh, sir, she died in Monthrehal.”
“Who died in Montreal?”
“Me wife, sor, the voyidge killed her sor; oh, wirra, wirra, why did I bring her away.”
Three little children were clinging to his knees and looking up at me with wondering eyes. The man glanced up through his tears, which he struck from his eyes with his shut fists.