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more cheerful, but was politely communicative enough when I asked after the likelihood of my finding work in the town.

"There is no business doing," he said. "The bottom has fallen out of this place. There's two men looking for every job here, and my advice to you is to go somewhere else."

At the head of the street I came upon the foundation-work of another building, which, I learned, was to be an armory. Here the boss instantly offered me a job, if I could lay brick or do the work of a mason, but of unskilled labor he said that he had an abundant supply.

"But yonder," he added, "is the Asylum, and much work is in progress on the grounds, and there, surely, is your best chance of employment."

The Asylum was a State Homœopathic Institution for the Insane. I could see the large brick buildings on the highest area of spacious grounds, which spread away in easy undulations, with their natural beauty heightened by the tasteful work of a landscape gardener.

Near the entrance to the grounds, I came upon a large force of laborers digging a ditch for a water-main. The boss refused me a place, but not without evident regret at the necessity, and he was at pains to explain to me that, already on that morning, he had been obliged to turn away half a dozen men.

It was with no great expectation of success at finding work there that I began walking somewhat aimlessly through the Asylum grounds. The first person whom I met was an old Irish gardener. He painfully stood erect as I questioned him as to whom I should apply to for a job, and supported himself with one hand on my shoulder, while he told me of the medical superintendent, and the overseer and the foreman, who are in charge of various departments of the work. Presently his face brightened with excitement as he pointed to a large man who was walking toward one of the buildings, and he pushed me in his direction with a pressing injunction to apply to him, for he was the overseer of the grounds.

The overseer listened to my request, and read in silence my reference from the House," and looked me over for a moment; and then abruptly ordered me to

report at seven o'clock on the next morning, adding, as he disappeared within the building, that he was paying his men a dollar and a half a day. The old Irish gardener showed the heartiest pleasure at my success, and directed me to a boardinghouse near the Asylum grounds, where I was soon settled, and where, at noon, I ate a memorable dinner, the first square meal for thirty-six hours, and the first one which had about it the elements of decent comfort, since I left Mrs. Flaherty's table.

At seven o'clock on the next morning I was one of a gang of twenty laborers who were digging a sewer-ditch. The ditch had passed the farther edge of a meadow, and must cut its way through the field to the Asylum buildings, two hundred yards beyond. Its course was marked by a straight cut through the sod which was to furnish us a guide. Some of the men took their former places in unfinished portions of the work, and the rest of us fell apart, leaving intervals of about three yards from man to man. With the cut as a guide, and with the single instruction to keep the ditch two feet wide, we began to wield our picks and shovels.

A thick, unmoving fog lay damp upon the meadow already saturated with dew. The sun-rays, gathering penetrating power as they pierced the fog, were soon producing the effect of prickly heat. The atmosphere, surcharged with moisture, and lifeless in its sluggish weight, yet quick with stinging heat, was a medium in which the actual work done was out of proportion to its cost in potential energy. In the forceful Irishism of one of the laborers: "It was a muggy morning, and a man must do his work twice over to get it done."

By dint of strenuous industry and careful imitation of the methods of the other men, I managed to keep pace with them. I saw, from the first, that the work would be hard; and, in point of severity, it proved all that I had expected and more. To ply a pick and urge a shovel for five continuous hours calls for endurance. Down sweeps your pick with a mighty stroke upon what appears yielding, penetrable earth, only to come into contact with a rock concealed just below the surface—a contact which sends a violent jar through all your frame, causing vibrations which end in the sensation of an electric shock at your fin

ger-tips. A few repetitions of this experience are distinctly disheartening in effect. Besides, the sun has cleared the fog, and is shining full upon us through the still air. The trench is well below the surface now, and we work with the sun beating on our aching backs, and our heads buried in the ditch, where we breathe the hot air, heavy with the smell of fresh soil, and the sweat drips from our faces upon the damp clay.

By nine o'clock, what strength and courage I have left seem oozing from every pore. The demoralization is complete, and I know that only "the shame of open shame" holds me to my work. I dig mechanically on, through another sluggish hour of torment, and then I come to, and find myself breathing deeply, with long, regular breaths, in the miracle of "second wind," with fresh energy flowing like a stream of new life through my body.

Through all the working hours of the day the foreman sat upon a pile of tools, silently watching us at the job. Now and then, he politely urged that the ditch be kept not less than two feet wide, and nothing could have been farther from his manner and speech than any approach to abusing the men. It was his evident purpose to treat us well, but the act of his oversight, under the conditions of our employment, involved the practical wasting of his day, and cast upon us the suspicion of dishonesty.

On the next day, which was Saturday, the foreman sent me down the ditch, where the pipe was already laid, and ordered me, with two other men, to fill in the earth. On Monday morning, he met me with an order for yet another change. At the barn I would find "Hunt," he said, and I was to report to him as his "help."

Hunt proved to be a good-looking, taciturn teamster, who had just hitched his horses to a "truck," and he told me to get aboard. The "truck was a heavy, fourwheeled vehicle, without a box, but with, instead, a stout platform, suspended from the axle-trees, and resting but a few inches from the ground. Standing upon this, we drove all day, from point to point about the buildings and grounds, attending to manifold needs.

We carted the milk-cans from the dairy to the kitchen, and great bags of soiled clothes from the entries to the laundry, and

huge cans of swill from the kitchen to the pig-sty at the edge of the wood below the meadow. Then we emptied the ash-barrels, and replaced them for a fresh supply; and carted several loads of vegetables from the garden to the kitchen; and spent most of the afternoon in filling the great refrigerators with ice.

With slight changes in detail, this continued the order of our work through the remaining days of my stay. I had reached my level, and I held the job long enough to find myself well ensconced at the asylum, and then I told the foreman that I wished to go. He looked at me in some

surprise, and began to argue the point. "You'd better stay by your job," he said. "It is not the best work, but we'll find better for you in time.”

I thanked him heartily, and told him that I was interested to learn that, but that I felt obliged to go. He shook hands with me, and cordially "wished me luck," and told me to apply to him for work, if I happened again in those parts.

It was clear that a rate of progress which had carried me not even so far as the eastern border-line of Pennsylvania, during nearly two months of my expedition, would require a considerable portion of a lifetime in which to accomplish the three thousand miles before me. I resolved upon longer walks as a wiser policy for at least the immediate future.

A rough plan was soon formed. I had saved nearly six dollars. It was a Wednesday morning. I would give three days to uninterrupted walking, 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 journey once more.

I cannot dwell here upon the details of that three days' tramp. At nightfall of the third evening, I entered Wilkesbarre, but I got so far in that time only by virtue of a long lift, which carried me, by a stroke of rare good fortune, over much the longest part of the last day's journey.

So far, my plan had been carried out. It was Friday evening, and I was safe in

Wilkesbarre, somewhat worn with a 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 this 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 supper and a bed in a cheap boarding-house, and a breakfast at its table, before beginning my search in the morning. Further good fortune awaited me, for Saturday 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 sight of a stone building that was nearing completion, and there, too, no added hands were needed.

By this time, I had neared the postoffice, 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 seductions, 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 read on until mounting

remorse robbed the reading of all pleasure, and drove me to my task again.

But I had fallen once, and by a sad fatality, scarcely had I renewed the search, with weakened powers of resistance, when I stumbled upon a fiercer temptation, in the form of a library, which announced in plain letters its freedom to the public until the hour of nine in the evening.

Forgetful of my character as a workman, miserably callous to the claim of duty to find employment, if possible, and in any case, to live honestly the life which I had assumed, I entered the wide-open, hospitable doors, and was soon lost to other thought, and even to the sense of shame, in the absorbing interest of favorite books.

In the lonely tramp across the mountains of Pike County, I walked sometimes for miles with no opportunity of quenching a growing thirst, when suddenly I came upon a mountain spring that trickled from the solid rock, and formed a pool in its shade, where I threw myself on the ground, and, with a glorious sense of relief, drank deeply of its cold water. The analogy is a weak one, for the physical relief and the momentary pleasure but faintly suggest the prolonged intellectual delight, after two months of unslackened thirst.

Here was an inexhaustible supply, and there were polite librarians, who responded cheerfully to your slightest wish; and, best of all, there was an inner door which disclosed a reading-room, where perfect quiet reigned, and comfortable chairs invited you to grateful ease, and shelves on shelves of books were free to your eager hand.

To pass from one writer to another among the volumes that lay on the table, lingering over long-loved passages, or dipping lightly here and there, absorbing pleasure from the very touch of the book and the sight of the well-printed page, charmed by some characteristic phrase, as when George Eliot describes a crucifix as "the image of a willing anguish for a great end," or in commenting, in passing, upon the quotation, “deiòv tò tikteiv ẻotív,” she paraphrases it in her glowing English, Mighty is the force of motherhood!"

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Ah, what delights can equal those
That stir the spirit's inner deeps?

What indeed, unless it be to sink into the folds of an easy-chair, with a hitherto

unseen edition of Tennyson in six volumes, new and beautiful, a fit setting for the verse of that great master, whom Mr. Andrew Lang has lately called, with the glow of a true enthusiasm, "the sweetest and strongest, the most exquisite, the most learned, and the most Virgilian of all our modern poets." To catch once more the pure, rich melody of his music as he sings from "the midmost heart of grief," or mounts to the abounding ecstasy of the "hungry heart," to whom life piled on life were all too little ! Old passages, worn by wont and use to little meaning, but returning now to my craving sense with the freshness of their first awakening power. And last, and best of all, to reach an Iliad from its shelf and lose myself in strong delight in

matin songs that woke

The darkness of the planet

songs of rich, abundant life, when the world was young and men were heroes all, and knew their vital kinship with the gods, and with the living springs and fragrant flowers, and with the singing birds and snow-white sheep. And life moved forward in the strength of great passions that make men, and "in the glorious might of heaven-born freedom" men grew to nature's strength and beauty, and never knew the yoke of long tradition nor the load of custom that "lies upon us with a weight heavy as frost and deep almost as life.'

And now the noise of battle rose in that incomparable hexameter, and "three times the bravest of the Greeks attacked the walls of Troy, there by the fig-tree near the Scaian gates where the city lies lowest, led on by Ajax and Idomeneus, by the two Atridæ and Tydeus's son, whether some cunning seer taught the craft or their own spirits stirred and drove them on!" And clanging in horrid discord with the clash of arms, there broke suddenly the sound of slamming shutters, which was the janitor's signal for nine o'clock, the hour of closing for the night.

Taking my hat and stick I walk out into the gas-lit street and into our modern world so different from the past, with its artificialities and its social and labor problems, and I remember that I am a proletaire out of a job, and that with shameless neglect of duty I have been idling through

priceless hours. Crestfallen I hurry to my boarding-house, longing, like any conscience-stricken inebriate, to lose remorse in sleep.

As I walk to my lodgings a certain fellow-feeling warms me with fresh sympathy for my kind. I have met with my first reverse, not a serious one, but still the search for work, for the first time in my experience, has been fruitless through most of a morning. Instead of persevering industriously I yield weakly to the desire to forget my present lot and the duty it entails in the intoxication that beacons to me from free books. That happens to be my temptation, and I fall. Another workman of my class in precisely my position encounters, not one chance temptation which he might escape by taking another street, but at every corner open doors that invite him to the companionship of other men, who will help him to forget his discouragements so long as his savings last; and as we are both turned into the street at night, in what do we differ as regards our moral strength? He yielded to his temptation and I to mine.

The history of the next few days does not belong to the present story. A reference in church on the following morning to a sorrow which threatened the home of friends, and threatened me with the loss of a most honored teacher, drove me in anxious haste to a point in the mountains where I learned that his near kinsfolk were camping. For a time I forgot the exciting perplexities of a common laborer's life in the ease and comfort and delightful intercourse of a charming home.

WILLIAMSPORT, LYCOMING COUNTY, PA.,

Saturday, 3d October, 1891.

FROM Wilkesbarre it was an easy day's march to the village of Pleasant Hill, which lies in the way to Williamsport. The only notable incident of the tramp was one which confirmed me in an early formed policy. I have avoided the railways, and have walked, in preference, along the country roads, as affording better opportunities of intercourse with people. But in going on that morning from Wilkesbarre to the ferry, which crosses the river to Plymouth, I took the advice of a gatekeeper at a railway-crossing and started

down the track on a long trestle as a short cut to the ferry. All went well until I was half way over, and then two coal-trains passed simultaneously in opposite directions, and I hung by my hands from the framework at one side, while the engineer and fireman on the locomotive nearest me laughed heartily at the figure that I cut, with the side of each car grazing my pack and my hold on the railing growing visibly slacker.

It was a little after nightfall when I reached the tavern at Pleasant Hill. Of my wages I had fifty cents left. I questioned the proprietor as to the demand for work in his community. He was quite encouraging. Only that afternoon, he said, one of the best farmers of the neighborhood had been inquiring in the village for a possible man, and to the best of his knowledge he had not found one. I said that I should apply at his farm in the morning, and then I broached the subject of entertainment. We soon struck a bargain for a supper and breakfast and the privilege of a bed on the hay, but when, after supper, I asked to be directed to the barn, the landlord silently led the way to a little room upstairs, and there wished me good-night.

In the early morning he pointed out for me the road to his neighbor's farm, which I followed with ready success. I was penniless now and had only an uncertain chance of work. And then, if the farmer should ask me, I should be obliged to own to inexperience, and the demand for farm hands, I supposed, must be limited at a date so far into the autumn. But the morning was exquisite, and the buoyancy that it bred was an easy match for misgivings, so that it was with a light heart that I turned from the road into a lane which leads to the house of a farmer, whom I shall call Mr. Hill.

All about me were the marks of thrift. The fences stood straight and stout, with an air of lasting security. On a rising ledge above the lane was the farm-house, a small, unpainted wooden cottage, bleached to the rich, deep brown of a well-colored meerschaum pipe, and as snug and tight as a pilot's schooner. Near it was a summer kitchen, that seemed fairly to glow with conscious pride in its cleanness, and the very foot-path from the

gate to the cottage door was swept like a threshing-floor.

On the doorstep sat a girl in a calico dress of delicate pink, with a dark gingham apron concealing all its front. She was shelling peas into a milk-pan which rested on her lap, and the morning sunlight was in her flaxen hair, and showed you the delicate freshness of a pink and white complexion.

Sober hazel eyes were fixed on me as I walked up the footpath, and of us two I was the embarrassed one. I have not got over a certain timidity in asking for work, and each request is a sturdy effort of the will, with the rest of me in cowardly revolt, and a timid shrinking much in evidence, I fear.

"Is this Mr. Hill's farm?" I ask.

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Yes," says the young woman, with grave dignity, and the most natural selfpossession in the world. "Is he at home?" I am sweating freely now, as I stand with my hat crushed between my hands, and the pack feeling like a mountain on my back.

"He is down at the pond on the edge of the farm." And her serious eyes follow the line of the lane which sinks from the house with the downward slope of the land.

With her permission, I leave the pack behind, and then follow the indicated way. The barn is on my right, a large, unpainted structure, stained by weather to as dark a hue as the house, but there are no loose boards about it, nor any rifts among the shingles, and the doors hang true on their hinges, and meet in well-adjusted touch. The cow-yard and the pig-sty flank the lane, and the neatness of the yard and the tightness of the troughs make clear that there is no waste of fodder there. Farther down and on my left is the wagon-house, as good a building almost as the cottage, and with much the same clean, strong compactness. There are no ploughs nor other farming tools lying exposed to the weather, no signs of idle capital wasting with the wear of rust, but everywhere the active, thrifty strength of wise economy.

Two men are at work at the pond, and I pick my man at once. They are plainly brothers, but the Mr. Hill of whom I am in search is the stronger looking man, and is clearly in command of the job. I am

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