Oh ye gods! I give you my charge
To protect my hero, George,
And return him safe home to my arms.
Then, bending toward me, he placed a trembling hand on my knee; and looking dimly into my eyes, he said, in husky tones: "And they did, didn't they?" I assented earnestly, charmed by his sincerity and enthusiasm, only hopeful that there was some mistake in the unexpected glimpse of Lady Washington in the character of a poet, and like my friend struggling with feeling that I found it hard to suppress, and which expressed, would have been sadly out of harmony with the scriptural injunction to "weep with them that weep."
There was a charm in the old cobbler's harangue, which I felt for long. Even his views of life seemed to appear in these crude enthusiasms upon general themes. There was a note of optimism which one could not fail to catch, and to respect in a man who, for fifty years, had honestly earned his living on a cobbler's bench. His sense of proprietorship in his country, and of natural right to high personal pride in her history, conveyed themselves to you as strong convictions, and you understood something of the power which dwells in a people who feel thus toward their country, and who share in her control.
An hour later I was at the Asylum on the errand of getting my pay. I had anticipated the appointed time by a few minutes, and was the first of the workmen in the office. The clerk was in his place, however; and my appearance, hat in hand, furnished him with the signal for drawing from his desk the receipt-forms, upon which the men acknowledge the payments by their signatures. In the bustle of the business just beginning, the clerk turned upon me and asked, somewhat brusquely, if I could write my name, or whether he should write it for me, and I affix my mark. So unexpected was the question, that I was conscious at first of some bewilderment, and then of a rising resentment against the fact that such a question should be put to an American workman. I said that I had acquired the habit of signing my own name when necessary; but I might have spared myself that folly, for the clerk hastened to explain with the kindest consideration that, of all the laborers whom he habitually pays off, scarcely half can write; "although," he added, with an admirable touch of fairness, "a very small proportion of the illiterate are native-born Americans." I am afraid that my resentment had its source in a grotesquely foolish feeling. I have been mistaken for a drunkard, and a detective, and a disreputable double of myself, and have been made a bogey of to frighten children into obedience withal, but not once, so far as I know, have I been taken for a gentleman. And if the truth must be told, I fear that the very success of my disguise is somewhat chagrinning at times.
There was no wrench on the next morning in parting with the family with whom I boarded, unless my landlady shared my regret at leaving. She was a meek little woman who slaved heroically at household work to support her daughter, who studied stenography and typewriting, and her idle husband, who led the life of a professional invalid. He had tried upon me highly colored tales of his career as a soldier, and of what he would have done in life but for his ill-health, tales which I soon learned to interrupt with small services to his wife, and he gave me up as hopelessly unsympathetic. A baseball game on the Asylum grounds attracted a large crowd one afternoon; and as Hunt and I drove past on an errand, I caught sight of the ex-soldier, who, at his home, was too great a sufferer to contribute even a helping hand at the housework toward his own support, but who here was dancing in vigor of delight over a two-base hit.
It was clear that a rate of progress which had carried me not even so far as the border line of Pennsylvania, during nearly two months, would require a considerable portion of a lifetime in which to accomplish the three thousand miles before me. I resolved upon more energetic tramping as a wiser policy for, at least, the immediate future.
A rough plan was soon formed. I had saved nearly six dollars. It was Wednesday morning. I would give three days to uninterrupted walk, and by Friday evening I should reach Wilkesbarre. The whole of Saturday, if so much time were needed, could then be given to a search for employment; and the rest of Sunday would put me in trim to begin on Monday morning the work which would provide in a few days for present needs, and furnish a balance with which to begin the tramp once more.