We Discover New England
Edwin Booth's performance of _Hamlet_ had another effect. It brought to
my mind the many stories of Boston which my father had so often related
to his children. I recalled his enthusiastic accounts of the elder Booth
and Edwin Forrest, and especially his descriptions of the wonderful
scenic effects in _Old Put_ and _The Gold Seekers_, wherein actors rode
down mimic stone steps or debarked from theatrical ships which sailed
into pictured wharves, and one day in the midst of my lathing and
sawing, I evolved a daring plan--I decided to visit Boston and explore
New England.
With all his feeling for the East my father had never revisited it. This
was a matter of pride with him. "I never take the back trail," he said,
and yet at times, as he dwelt on the old home in the state of Maine a
wistful note had crept into his voice, and so now in writing to him, I
told him that I intended to seek out his boyhood haunts in order that I
might tell him all about the friends and relations who still lived
there.
Without in any formal way intending it the old borderman had endowed
both his sons with a large sense of the power and historic significance
of Massachusetts. He had contrived to make us feel some part of his
idolatry of Wendell Phillips, for his memory of the great days of _The
Liberator_ were keen and worshipful. From him I derived a belief that
there were giants in those days and the thought of walking the streets
where Garrison was mobbed and standing in the hall which Webster had
hallowed with his voice gave me a profound anticipatory stir of delight.
As first assistant to a quaint and dirty old carpenter, I was now
earning two dollars per day, and saving it. There was no occasion in
those days for anyone to give me instructions concerning the care of
money. I knew how every dollar came and I was equally careful to know
where every nickel went. Travel cost three cents per mile, and the
number of cities to be visited depended upon the number of dimes I
should save.
With my plan of campaign mapped out to include a stop at Niagara Falls
and fourth of July on Boston Common I wrote to my brother at Valparaiso,
Indiana, inviting him to join me in my adventure. "If we run out of
money and of course we shall, for I have only about thirty dollars,
we'll flee to the country. One of my friends here says we can easily
find work in the meadows near Concord."
The audacity of my design appealed to my brother's imagination. "I'm
your huckleberry!" he replied. "School ends the last week in June. I'll
meet you at the Atlantic House in Chicago on the first. Have about
twenty dollars myself."
At last the day came for my start. With all my pay in my pocket and my
trunk checked I took the train for Chicago. I shall never forget the
feeling of dismay with which, an hour later, I perceived from the car
window a huge smoke-cloud which embraced the whole eastern horizon, for
this, I was told was the soaring banner of the great and gloomy inland
metropolis, whose dens of vice and houses of greed had been so often
reported to me by wandering hired men. It was in truth only a huge
flimsy country town in those days, but to me it was august as well as
terrible.
Up to this moment Rockford was the largest town I had ever seen, and the
mere thought of a million people stunned my imagination. "How can so
many people find a living in one place?" Naturally I believed most of
them to be robbers. "If the city is miles across, how am I to get from
the railway station to my hotel without being assaulted?" Had it not
been for the fear of ridicule, I think I should have turned back at the
next stop. The shining lands beyond seemed hardly worth a struggle
against the dragon's brood with which the dreadful city was a-swarm.
Nevertheless I kept my seat and was carried swiftly on.
Soon the straggling farm-houses thickened into groups, the villages
merged into suburban towns, and the train began to clatter through sooty
freight yards filled with box cars and switching engines; at last, after
crawling through tangled, thickening webs of steel, it plunged into a
huge, dark and noisy shed and came to a halt and a few moments later I
faced the hackmen of Chicago, as verdant a youth as these experienced
pirates had ever made common cause against.
I knew of them (by report), and was prepared for trouble, but their
clanging cries, their cynical eyes, their clutching insolent hands were
more terrifying than anything I had imagined. Their faces expressed
something remorseless, inhuman and mocking. Their grins were like those
of wolves.
In my hand I carried an imitation leather valise, and as I passed, each
of the drivers made a snatch at it, almost tearing it from my hands, but
being strong as well as desperate, I cleared myself of them, and so,
following the crowd, not daring to look to right or left, reached the
street and crossed the bridge with a sigh of relief. So much was
accomplished.
Without knowing where I should go, I wandered on, shifting my bag from
hand to hand, till my mind recovered its balance. My bewilderment, my
depth of distrust, was augmented by the roar and tumult of the crowd. I
was like some wild animal with exceedingly sensitive ears. The waves of
sound smothered me.
At last, timidly approaching a policeman, I asked the way to the
Atlantic Hotel.
"Keep straight down the street five blocks and turn to the left," he
said, and his kind voice filled me with a glow of gratitude.
With ears benumbed and brain distraught, I threaded the rush, the clamor
of Clark street and entered the door of the hotel, with such relief as a
sailor must feel upon suddenly reaching safe harbor after having been
buffeted on a wild and gloomy sea by a heavy northeast gale.
It was an inconspicuous hotel of the "Farmer's Home" type, but I
approached the desk with meek reluctance and explained, "I am expecting
to meet my brother here. I'd like permission to set my bag down and
wait."
With bland impersonal courtesy the clerk replied, "Make yourself at
home."
Gratefully sinking into a chair by the window, I fell into study of the
people streaming by, and a chilling sense of helplessness fell upon me.
I realized my ignorance, my feebleness. As a minute bubble in this
torrent of human life, with no friend in whom I could put trust, and
with only a handful of silver between myself and the gray wolf, I lost
confidence. The Boston trip seemed a foolish tempting of Providence and
yet, scared as I was, I had no real intention of giving it up.
My brother's first words as he entered the door, were gayly derisive.
"Oh, see the whiskers!" he cried and his calm acceptance of my plan
restored my own courage.
Together we planned our itinerary. We were to see Niagara Falls, of
course, but to spend the fourth of July on Boston Common, was our true
objective. "When our money is used up," I said, "we'll strike out into
the country."
To all this my brother agreed. Neither of us had the slightest fear of
hunger in the country. It was the city that gave us pause.
All the afternoon and evening we wandered about the streets (being very
careful not to go too far from our hotel), counting the stories of the
tall buildings, and absorbing the drama of the pavement. Returning now
and again to our sanctuary in the hotel lobby we ruminated and rested
our weary feet.
Everything interested us. The business section so sordid to others was
grandly terrifying to us. The self-absorption of the men, the calm
glances of the women humbled our simple souls. Nothing was commonplace,
nothing was ugly to us.
We slept that night in a room at the extreme top of the hotel. It
couldn't have been a first class accommodation, for the frame of the bed
fell in the moment we got into it, but we made no complaint--we would
not have had the clerk know of our mishap for twice our bill. We merely
spread the mattress on the floor and slept till morning.
Having secured our transportation we were eager to be off, but as our
tickets were second class, and good only on certain trains, we waited.
We did not even think of a sleeping car. We had never known anyone rich
enough to occupy one. Grant and Edwin Booth probably did, and senators
were ceremonially obliged to do so, but ordinary folks never looked
forward to such luxury. Neither of us would have known what to do with a
berth if it had been presented to us, and the thought of spending two
dollars for a night's sleep made the cold chills run over us. We knew of
no easier way to earn two dollars than to save them, therefore we rode
in the smoker.
Late that night as we were sitting stoically in our places, a brakeman
came along and having sized us up for the innocents we were,
good-naturedly said, "Boys, if you'll get up I'll fix your seats so's
you can lie down and catch a little sleep."
Silently, gratefully we watched him while he took up the cushions and
turned them lengthwise, thus making a couch. To be sure, it was a very
short and very hard bed but with the health and strength of nineteen and
twenty-two, we curled up and slept the remainder of the night like
soldiers resting on their guns. Pain, we understood, was an unavoidable
accompaniment of travel.
When morning dawned the train was running through Canada, and excitedly
calling upon Franklin to rouse, I peered from the window, expecting to
see a land entirely different from Wisconsin and Illinois. We were both
somewhat disappointed to find nothing distinctive in either the land or
its inhabitants. However, it was a foreign soil and we had seen it. So
much of our exploration was accomplished.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when we came in sight of the
suspension bridge and Niagara Falls. I suppose it would be impossible
for anyone now to feel the same profound interest in any natural
phenomenon whatsoever. We believed that we were approaching the most
stupendous natural wonder in all the world, and we could scarcely credit
the marvel of our good fortune.
All our lives we had heard of this colossal cataract. Our school readers
contained stately poems and philosophical dissertations concerning it.
Gough, the great orator, had pointed out the likeness of its resistless
torrent to the habit of using spirituous liquors. The newspapers still
printed descriptions of its splendor and no foreigner (so we understood)
ever came to these shores without visiting and bowing humbly before the
voice of its waters.--And to think that we, poor prairie boys, were soon
to stand upon the illustrious brink of that dread chasm and listen to
its mighty song was wonderful, incredible, benumbing!
Alighting at the squalid little station on the American side, we went to
the cheapest hotel our keen eyes could discover, and leaving our
valises, we struck out immediately toward the towering white column of
mist which could be seen rising like a ghostly banner behind the trees.
We were like those who first discover a continent.
As we crept nearer, the shuddering roar deepened, and our awe, our
admiration, our patriotism deepened with it, and when at last we leaned
against the rail and looked across the tossing spread of river swiftly
sweeping to its fall, we held our breaths in wonder. It met our
expectations.
Of course we went below and spent two of our hard-earned dollars in
order to be taken behind the falls. We were smothered with spray and
forced to cling frenziedly to the hands of our guide, but it was a part
of our duty, and we did it. No one could rob us of the glory of having
adventured so far.
That night we resumed our seats in the smoking car, and pushed on toward
Boston in patiently-endured discomfort. Early the following morning we
crossed the Hudson, and as the Berkshire hills began to loom against the
dawn, I asked the brakeman, with much emotion, "Have we reached the
Massachusetts line?" "We have," he said, and by pressing my nose against
the glass and shading my face with my hands I was able to note the
passing landscape.
Little could be seen other than a tumbled, stormy sky with wooded
heights dimly outlined against it, but I had all the emotions of a
pilgrim entering upon some storied oriental vale. Massachusetts to me
meant Whittier and Hawthorne and Wendell Phillips and Daniel Webster. It
was the cradle of our liberty, the home of literature, the province of
art--and it contained Boston!
As the sun rose, both of us sat with eyes fixed upon the scenery,
observant of every feature. It was all so strange, yet familiar! Barns
with long, sloping roofs stood with their backs against the hillsides,
precisely as in the illustrations to Hawthorne's stories, and Whittier's
poems. The farm-houses, old and weather-beaten and guarded by giant
elms, looked as if they might have sheltered Emerson and Lowell. The
little villages with narrow streets lined with queer brick-walled houses
(their sides to the gutter) reminded us of the pictures in Ben
Franklin's _Autobiography_.
Everything was old, delightfully old. Nothing was new.--Most of the
people we saw were old. The men working in the fields were bent and
gray, scarcely a child appeared, though elderly women abounded. (This
was thirty-five years ago, before the Canadians and Italians had begun
to swarm). Everywhere we detected signs of the historical, the
traditional, the Yankee. The names of the stations rang in our ears like
bells, _Lexington_, _Concord_, _Cambridge_, _Charlestown_, and--at last
_Boston_!
What a strange, new world this ancient city was to us, as we issued from
the old Hoosac Tunnel station! The intersection of every street was a
bit of history. The houses standing sidewise to the gutter, the narrow,
ledge-like pavements, the awkward two-wheeled drays and carts, the men
selling lobsters on the corner, the newsboys with their "papahs," the
faces of the women so thin and pale, the men, neat, dapper, small, many
of them walking with finicky precision as though treading on
eggs,--everything had a Yankee tang, a special quality, and then, the
noise! We had thought Chicago noisy, and so it was, but here the clamor
was high-keyed, deafening for the reason that the rain-washed streets
were paved with cobble stones over which enormous carts bumped and
clattered with resounding riot.
Bewildered,--with eyes and ears alert, we toiled up Haymarket Square
shoulder to shoulder, seeking the Common. Of course we carried our
hand-bags--(the railway had no parcel rooms in those days, or if it had
we didn't know it) clinging to them like ants to their eggs and so
slowly explored Tremont Street. Cornhill entranced us with its amazing
curve. We passed the Granary Burying Ground and King's Chapel with awe,
and so came to rest at last on the upper end of the Common! We had
reached the goal of our long pilgrimage.
To tell the truth, we were a little disappointed in our first view of
it. It was much smaller than we had imagined it to be and the pond was
ONLY a pond, but the trees were all that father had declared them to be.
We had known broad prairies and splendid primitive woodlands--but these
elms dated back to the days of Washington, and were to be reverenced
along with the State House and Bunker Hill.
We spent considerable time there on that friendly bench, resting in the
shadows of the elms, and while sitting there, we ate our lunch, and
watched the traffic of Tremont Street, in perfect content till I
remembered that the night was coming on, and that we had no place to
sleep.
Approaching a policeman I inquired the way to a boarding house.
The officer who chanced to be a good-natured Irishman, with a courtesy
almost oppressive, minutely pointed the way to a house on Essex Street.
Think of it--Essex Street! It sounded like Shakespeare and Merrie
England!
Following his direction, we found ourselves in the door of a small house
on a narrow alley at the left of the Common. The landlady, a kindly
soul, took our measure at once and gave us a room just off her little
parlor, and as we had not slept, normally, for three nights, we decided
to go at once to bed. It was about five o'clock, one of the noisiest
hours of a noisy street, but we fell almost instantly into the kind of
slumber in which time and tumult do not count.
When I awoke, startled and bewildered, the sounds of screaming children,
roaring, jarring drays, and the clatter of falling iron filled the room.
At first I imagined this to be the business of the morning, but as I
looked out of the window I perceived that it was sunset! "Wake up!" I
called to Franklin. "_It's the next day!_" "We've slept twenty-four
hours!--What will the landlady think of us?"
Frank did not reply. He was still very sleepy, but he dressed, and with
valise in hand dazedly followed me into the sitting room. The woman of
the house was serving supper to her little family. To her I said,
"You've been very kind to let us sleep all this time. We were very
tired."
"All this time?" she exclaimed.
"Isn't it the next day?" I asked.
Then she laughed, and her husband laughed, doubling himself into a knot
of merriment. "Oh, but that's rich!" said he. "You've been asleep
exactly an hour and a quarter," he added. "How long did you _think_
you'd slept--two days?"
Sheepishly confessing that I thought we had, I turned back to bed, and
claimed ten hours more of delicious rest.
All "the next day" we spent in seeing Bunker Hill, Faneuil Hall, the old
North Church, King's Chapel, Longfellow's home, the Washington Elm, and
the Navy Yard.--It was all glorious but a panic seized us as we found
our money slipping away from us, and late in the afternoon we purchased
tickets for Concord, and fled the roaring and turbulent capital.
We had seen the best of it anyway. We had tasted the ocean and found it
really salt, and listened to "the sailors with bearded lips" on the
wharves where the ships rocked idly on the tide,--The tide! Yes, that
most inexplicable wonder of all we had proved. We had watched it come in
at the Charles River Bridge, mysterious as the winds. We knew it was so.
Why Concord, do you ask? Well, because Hawthorne had lived there, and
because the region was redolent of Emerson and Thoreau, and I am glad to
record that upon reaching it of a perfect summer evening, we found the
lovely old village all that it had been pictured by the poets. The wide
and beautiful meadows, the stone walls, the slow stream, the bridge and
the statue of the "Minute Man" guarding the famous battlefield, the gray
old Manse where Hawthorne lived, the cemetery of Sleepy Hollow, the
grave of Emerson--all these historic and charming places enriched and
inspired us. This land, so mellowed, so harmonious, so significant,
seemed hardly real. It was a vision.
We rounded out our day by getting lodgings in the quaint old Wright's
tavern which stood (and still stands) at the forks of the road, a
building whose date painted on its chimney showed that it was nearly two
hundred years old! I have since walked Carnarvan's famous walls, and sat
in the circus at Nismes--but I have never had a deeper thrill of
historic emotion than when I studied the beamed ceiling of that little
dining room. Our pure joy in its age amused our landlord greatly.
Being down to our last dollar, we struck out into the country next
morning, for the purpose of finding work upon a farm but met with very
little encouragement. Most of the fields were harvested and those that
were not were well supplied with "hands." Once we entered a beautiful
country place where the proprietor himself (a man of leisure, a type we
had never before seen) interrogated us with quizzical humor, and at last
sent us to his foreman with honest desire to make use of us. But the
foreman had nothing to give, and so we went on.
All day we loitered along beautiful wood roads, passing wonderful old
homesteads gray and mossy, sheltered by trees that were almost human in
the clasp of their protecting arms. We paused beside bright streams, and
drank at mossy wells operated by rude and ancient sweeps, contrivances
which we had seen only in pictures. It was all beautiful, but we got no
work. The next day, having spent our last cent in railway tickets, we
rode to Ayer Junction, where we left our trunks in care of the baggage
man and resumed our tramping.