The walk from Kimble to Tafton, I presently found, could be shortened by taking a path through the forest; and I was soon panting up the hillside, grateful for the long twilight which promised to see me safe, before the darkness, to my destination.
On the way I fell in with a young quarryman, whose home was near Tafton, and who willingly became my guide. He was only sixteen, but already he had worked for four years at his trade. His gaunt, angular body showed plainly the marks of arrested development, when the growth of the boy had hardened prematurely into an almost deformed figure of a confirmed laborer.
He lunged clumsily beside me, and was inclined to be taciturn at first; but he warmed presently to readier speech, and talked frankly of his work and manner of life. At twelve he had been taken from school and sent to the quarry to help his father support a growing family. And then his days had settled into a ceaseless round of hard work, from which there was no escape for him until he should be twenty-one, an age which appeared to his perception at an almost infinite distance.
His attitude to his present circumstances was not a resentful one. He seemed to think it most natural that he should help in the family support; or, rather, no other possibility seemed to occur to him. It was soon apparent, too, that his chiefest hope and ambition, with reference to his ultimate freedom from that necessity, were centred in a possible return to school advantages. He spoke of his efforts to study after work hours, and of the hardness of such a course, and owned to the fear of insurmountable difficulties in the future. His reticence was gone now, and he was speaking with hearty freedom, and with his eyes all alight with the dream of his life. I told him something of the increased opportunities of education for men who must make their own way, and of how many men I had known who had supported themselves through college.
We parted at the edge of the forest, where we reached his home, a frail shell of a shanty, standing upon stumps of felled trees, and he was welcomed by the sight of his mother, chopping wood at the roadside, and a troop of ragged children playing about the open door.
At nightfall, on the next evening, I entered Wilkesbarre, but I got so far only by virtue of a long lift in a farmer's cart, which carried me, by a stroke of great good fortune, over much the longest part of the day's journey.
So far my plan had been carried out. It was Friday evening, and I was safe in Wilkesbarre, somewhat worn by the walk of rather over eighty miles, and with an increased dislike for my burdensome pack, but with every prospect of being fit for work so soon as I should find it. My success in that direction had been so uniform, that instead of sleeping in the open, as I had done on the night before, I allowed myself the luxury of a bed in a cheap boarding-house, and a supper and a breakfast at its table, before beginning my search. Further good fortune awaited me, for Saturday morning lent itself with cheerful brightness to the enterprise. At an early hour I stepped out into a busy street of the city, sore and stiff with walking, but high of hope, and not without a certain elevation of spirit, which might have warned me of a fall.
Work on the city sewers was being carried through the public square. I found the contractor, and applied for work as a digger. Very courteously he took the pains to explain to me that he was obliged to keep on hand, and pay for full time, a force of men far larger than was demanded, except by certain exigencies, and that he could not increase their number. Not far from the square another gang of workmen were laying the curbstones and repairing the street, but here I was again refused. I lifted my eyes to the site of a stone building that was nearing completion, and there, too, no added hands were needed.
By this time I had neared the post-office, and I found letters awaiting me there which claimed the next half hour. But even more embarrassing, as a check to further search, was a free reading-room, which now invited me to files of New York newspapers, in which I knew that I should find details of recent interesting political developments at Rochester and Saratoga, not to mention possible fresh complications in the more exciting game of politics abroad. I went in, and like Charles Kingsley's young monk, Philemon, who, wandering one day farther than ever before from the monastery in the desert, chanced upon the ruins of an old Egyptian temple; and mindful of a warning against such seduction, yet guiltily charmed by the rare beauty of the frescoes, prayed aloud, "Lord, turn away mine eyes, lest they behold vanity," but looked, nevertheless—I looked, too, and I read on until mounting remorse robbed the reading of all pleasure and drove me to my task again.