“Very well.”
“Do you want to leave early in the morning?” (The place was evidently a half-way house for tramps.)
“Yes. I want to leave early in the morning.”
“Then you will have to split kindling two hours to-night.”
“Show me the kindling.”
II
Splitting Kindling
In the basement I throned myself on one block while I chopped kindling on another. Before me, piled to the first story, was a cellarful of wood, the record of my predecessors in toil. I gathered that the corporal’s guard of the unemployed who stayed at the mission that night, and had been there two or three days, had finished their day’s assignment of splitting. They completely surrounded me, questioned me with the greatest curiosity, and put me down as a terrific liar, for I answered every question with simple truth.
As soon as the melodramatic workingman-boss went up stairs, one of them said, “Don’t work so fast. It’s only a matter of form this late at night. They want to see if you are willing, that’s all.”
I chopped a little faster for this advice. Not that I was out of humor with the advisers,—though I should have been, for they were box-car tramps.
One of them, having an evil and a witty eye, said, “If I was goin’ west like you, I’d start about ten o’clock to-night and be near Buffalo before morning.”