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.
“Sure I’m better off than that poor crathur yonder—go an’ shpake to her,
sor.”
The woman he pointed out was sitting alone in her seat. She was young and
good looking, but her face was drawn and pinched with some sudden and
bitter woe. Her baby was wrapped in a dark shawl, lying very still, and
she rocked it gently in her arms, and talked to it in cooing voice.
“Is your baby sick?”
“No sir.”
“It is sleeping then?”
“Yes sir, my baby is sleeping.”
A little girl who was on her knees beside the woman lifted the shawl from
the sleeper’s face. The baby was dead! The mother looked up with
A QUICK SHUDDER OF FEAR,
and with a world of pity in her startled eyes.
“Oh, sir, don’t tell them, they would take my baby away, and he would
never see it.”
“Who would never see it?”
“It’s her husband she manes,” said the sympathetic emigrant at my side.
“He sint fur her from Michigan. The wee choild was born after he left,
and she wants to bring him his baby dead or alive, poor craythur.”
“When did it die?”
“This soide of Kingston, sor. Shure the railway min don’t know it yit,
and there she has been houldin’ that dead baby in her arrums ever since.”
“I want t’ let him see it, sir; I want t’ let Miles see his baby,” and
bending over the little dead body the hot tears fell on the somber shawl.
In a far corner with their arms about one another, and with her head
lying on his breast, sat a young married couple who were going west to
seek their fortune. What a strange bridal trip! She was in a troubled
slumber, but he was painfully awake. Finally she awoke and looked about
her with an expression of alarm on her tired face, but when her eyes met
his a swift smile of gladness chased all fear away, and she nestled her
face on his shoulder again, and clasped her arms about his neck.
“Jim,” she said, softly, “I was dreaming of home—I thought I saw the old
bridge, and the chapel on the hill where we were married, and I thought
I saw mother comin’ down past the boreen, and she was callin’ to me,
‘Katie, Katie, where are you, asthore?’ and it wakened me.”
The girl sat erect, looking straight in her husband’s eyes. “Jimmy,” she
cried, “take me home again.” A look of pain swept over his face. She saw
it, and with a woman’s swift repentance she flung herself upon his breast
and was silent.
A look of utter weariness bordering on misery sat on one and all.
“Well, this is the divil’s own counthry, to be sure,” said a very
surprised and somewhat frightened-looking immigrant to me.
“How’s that?”
“Ye see that wee gurrul sittin’ there?”
He pointed to a Swedish girl who looked as if she had been crying very
recently.
“Well, be me sowl, it’s no loi, but a mon kem aboard awhile ago, and
while the craythur was asleep he stole her beyootiful yellow hair wid a
pair of shayers, be gob!”
“It seems to have frightened you?”
“Thrue for you. I saw a man on the platform above wid only wan leg, an’
bedad it wouldn’t surprise me if he tried to shtale one av moine.”
I jumped off, laughing at the fellow’s downright uneasiness, and in a few
moments the train drew out from the sheds.