SLOVAKS WORKING ON THE LINE WITH PICK AND SHOVEL
"SLOVAKS WORKING ON THE LINE WITH PICK AND SHOVEL."
Orviston prides itself on its fire-bricks. The whole village is made of them, and the pavement as well, and every brick is stamped "Orviston," and is both a commodity and an advertisement.
After I had visited the village store for provisions I re-entered the railway enclosure, and read as I did so the following notice typical of America: "Cultivate the safety habit—if you see anything wrong report it to the man with the button."
I met the man with the button after I had walked a mile along the way; he was a Slovak, working on the line with pick and shovel, a tall, brawny Slav, and with him a rather tubby little chap of the same nationality.
"You haf no räit on these läins," said the Slovak. "You go off. You are no railway man. What are you? Slavish?"
I replied in English, but on second thoughts went on in Russian. He understood, and was mollified at once. He was in America for the second time, they neither of them liked the old country. I photographed them as they stood—John Kresica and Paul Cipriela. They were unmarried men, and lived in a "boarding-house" in Orviston. They worked in a gang. Would I please send them a copy of the photograph? I agreed to do so; then, when I moved to go off the lines, the man with the button cried out, smiling:
"Hi! All-right, go ahead!"
I went on blithely. There was a change of weather in the afternoon. At one o'clock the sun lifted his arms and pulled apart the mist curtains at the zenith and disclosed himself—a miraculous apparition. The whole sky was cloudy, but the sun was shining. An apparition, the ghost of a sun, and then a reality—hot, light-pouring, cloud-dispersing. By two it was a hot summer day, at three there was not a cloud in the sky. What a change! It was clear that summer had progressed during the rain; insects of bright hues were on the wing, huge yellow-winged butterflies, crimson-thighed grasshoppers, green sun-beetles. A new-born butterfly settled three times on my sleeve; the fourth time I just caught him. I held him delicately between two fingers and let him go.
During a most exhilarating evening I tramped past houseless Panther and got to Cato at nightfall. Cato was a railway station of no pretensions; a broken-down shed with no door, no ticket offices, no porter. Passengers who wished to take a train had to wave a flag and trust to the eyesight of the engine-driver. For village, all that I could make out was a coal-bank, a shaft, and some heaps of old iron.
It was an extremely cold night, so I slept in the railway shed on a plank form that ran along the three sides of the building. I lay and looked out at the bright night shining over the mountains, dozed, waked,dozed again. Shortly after midnight I had a strange visitor. I was lying half-asleep, looking at a misshapen star which was resting on the mountains opposite me, which became a silver thumb pointing upward, which became at last the young crescent moon just rising. I was in that somnolent state when you ask, as you see the moon rising behind dark branches of the forest, Is it the moon in eclipse? is it a comet?—when a portly man with shovel hat came out of the night, stood in front of the shed, leaned on a thick cudgel, and looked in.
"Hallo!" said I.
"Haffing sum sleep?" queried the visitor.
"Yes, trying to; but it's a cold night."
"Ah, you haf bed pretty goot!"
"Who are you,—the night watchman?"
"Naw. You don't see a näit wawtchman without 'is lantern."
The old chap came close up to me, bent down, and whispered, "I'm in the same box as yourself."
"Walking all night?" I asked.
"The only vay to keep varm," said the old man ruefully. He took out a shining watch from his waistcoat.
"Three o'clock," said he. "In an hour it will be daylight. Oh, I think I'll try and sleep here an hour. Say, is there to eat along the road?"
I wasn't quite sure what he meant.
"Not much," I hazarded.
"Wot are you—you don't speak the langwage very goot," said the tramp.
"English."
"I am a Cherman."
The old man lay down on the plank form, resting his head on my feet, and using them for a pillow.
"How old are ye?" he went on.... "Hoh, I can give you forty years. If I were in Germany now I should be getting an army pension."
"Are you going back?" said I.
"Naw, naw. I could never give up this country."
We composed ourselves to sleep, but with his head resting on my feet I was too uncomfortable. "Presently I'll make a fire," said I, "and we'll have hot tea and some bread and butter." And after about twenty minutes I got up, put my boots on, and wandered out to find wood to make a fire. It was about half an hour before dawn. There was a hoar frost, and everything was cold and rimy to the touch. But I made up a bundle of last year's weeds, now sodden straws, and laid them on a half-sheet of my Sunday newspaper. That made a fine blaze, and with twigs and sticks and bits of old plank, I soon had a fine bonfire going. The old German came out and watched me incredulously. He didn't think it was possible to make a fire on such a morning. But he was soon convinced, and went about picking up chunks of wood desultorily, alleging thewhile that he couldn't have lit such a fire in three hours; evidently I knew how to do it.
"Shall I make tea or coffee?" I asked.
"Cawfee," said the old chap, his mouth watering. The word tea did not represent to him anything good.
"After a cup of hot cawfee I can go a long way. Hot cawfee, mind yer. Varm cawfee 'salright for lunch, but in the morning it must be hot. The only thing better than a cup of cawfee is a pint of whisky.... Say, you've enough fire here now to roast a chicken."
"Wish I had one, we'd roast it."
I emptied the last of my sugar into the pot, and seven or eight spoonfuls of coffee. It was to be "Turkish." The old tramp sat down on the stump of a tree, took out a curly German pipe, and then put a red coal on it. He had matches, but was economical in the matter of lights. "Say," he said to me later, pointing to the ground, "you've dropped a good match." I picked it up.
The coffee was "real good." The old fellow drank it through his thick moustache, and dipping his bread into his cup, munched great mouthfuls. I had offered him butter with his bread, but he refused. "Booter" was nothing to him. He liked apple-"booter."
"Say, you've got on a powerful pair of boots!"
"I need them, tramping to Chicago."
"Chicago's not a bad town if you know where togo. Say, presently you'll come to Snow Shoe. Don't go past it. You'll get something there."
The old man stopped a minute in his talk, and stared at me knowingly, didactically.
"Rich miners," he went on. "You need only ask. See this packet of tobacco, they gave it to me at the Company store. That's the thing I can't get on without, must have it. If a man asks me for a smoke and I haf it to give I must give him also. Where've you come from yesterday, Orviston?"
"No. Monument."
"Is there anything there?" he whispered mysteriously.
"Not much to be had," said I. "But there's a good deal of work, and they're bringing in a big gang of Italians. You can't get much of anything at the farms."
"Where Guineas are, I don't go. I don't like the Eyetaylians."
"D'you like the Jews?"
"They're a good people," said he. "Don't say anything against the Jews. I know a Jew who gives free boots to tramps. Last year I went into his store, and one of the shopmen came up to me and said, 'I know what you want, you'll get it. I'll tell the boss when he comes out.' And he gave me a powerful pair of boots, and sent me across the road to the Quick-lunch with a letter to the boss there, to giveme a good dinner. So I never say anything against the Jews."
"Do you know Cleveland?" said I.
"You bet. Lived there ten years ago, had a job on a Lake steamer. I worked one summer on a boat."
The old tramp stared at me as if he had confessed a sin. "Worked like a mule," he added sententiously, and stared again. "I had a home there, and lived just like a married man. But when I wanted to move on to Pittsburg my girl wouldn't go."
"I expect you're the sort of man who has run away from a wife in Germany," said I.
"Naw, naw. Never married."
Then he began to talk of his loves and conquests. At his age you'd have thought his mind would not have been filled with such vanities. He evidently earned money now and then, and went on "sprees." He averred that he had not a dime now, and was altogether "on the nail." I had an idea, however, that he had hidden on him, somewhere, passage-money to take him to Germany, to get that army pension. The Germans are a cautious people. They are cautious and cogitative, yet I wonder what the old man thought of me as he stumped away, leaning on his heavy walking-stick. He had been twenty-seven years on the road, and was very shrewd and experienced in many ways. Perhaps for a moment he took me for a gentleman burglar. He was immenselycurious to see what was in my sack, but he probably reflected—"Here is good hot, coffee, a fire, and a pleasant young man; make the most of it, and ask no inconvenient questions."
I put the fire out, shouldered my pack, and resumed the journey to Snow Shoe. The sun had risen, but his warmth was as yet shut away behind the wall of the mountains. The hoar-frost of night had not melted yet, and it was necessary to walk briskly to keep warm. It was so cold that I got to Snow Shoe before ten o'clock.
A feature of this tramping along the rails was the danger in crossing bridges. It was a single line, and as there were some twenty bridges over the flood of the river, there were twenty ordeals of trusting that no train would suddenly appear from a corner of the winding track and run me down. If a train had come whilst I was half-way across a bridge there was no refuge but the river, and I was always prepared to jump. For several nights after this bit of tramping I dreamed of crossing bridges, running on the sleepers and just passing the last beams as engines swept down on me. But it was pleasant climbing up so high, and feeling that within an hour or so Snow Shoe would be achieved. I had lived in the rumour of Snow Shoe for two days, and the name had come to correspond to something very beautiful in my mind. The sound of the name is pleasant to the ear, and every now andthen, as I hurried along, I asked, "Snow Shoe, Snow Shoe, what shall I find there?" I imagined the pioneers who first came up this beautiful valley and gave to an Indian settlement the dainty name—through what virginal loveliness they had passed! Then I thought of the reporter-poet of Scranton who objected to the beauty of Nature because it was independent of man.
THE SLAV CHILDREN OF SNOW-SHOE CREEK
THE SLAV CHILDREN OF SNOW-SHOE CREEK.
Then, man came along, the engine-man with his endless, empty freight train and his bellowing, steaming engine howling through the valley. One after another eight freight trains, each about a quarter of a mile long, came grinding past me, going up to the collieries to take their daily loads of carbon. Somehow I did not object; it was new America, the America of to-day careering over the America of 1492, and had to be accepted.
But Snow Shoe gave me pause. When I arrived at the little slate-roofed mining settlement I found there was considerable excitement among the children there. A cow had just been cut to pieces by the last freight train. The driver had driven his train over the beast and on without a word of remark or a hesitation, and a farmer was complaining bitterly, but the children—young Americans, Russians, Ruthenians, Slovaks, the ones who have in their keeping the America of to-morrow—were sitting round the remains, helling and God-damning and asking me facetious questions.And that was the answer to what I had asked myself—What shall I see at Snow Shoe? What am I walking so far and so high for to see?
Snow Shoe was the dreariest possible mining settlement, and its inhabitants slouched about its coaly ways and in and out of the saloons. Scarcely any one could speak English, and the mines were worked almost exclusively by Poles and Slovaks. The highest point in the Alleghanies, a hand of earth stretched up to heaven, perhaps a maledictory hand.
America celebrates no "Whit-Monday," but has Decoration Day instead; a great national festival, when medals are pinned on to veterans, the soldiers of the War of North against South are remembered, and the graves of heroes are decorated with flags and flowers. On Decoration Day, and again later, on Independence Day, the whole populace ceases work in the name of America, and flocks the streets, sings national songs and hymns, goes on procession, fires salutes, listens to speeches. We British are just wildly glad to get free from toil when Whit-Monday and August Bank Holiday come round. We have no national or religious fervour on these days. We have even been known to flock happily to Hampstead and Epping Forest to the strains of "England's going down the Hill." Upon occasion the British can be clamorously patriotic, but only upon occasion. But the American citizen is, to use his own phrase, "crazy about America" all the while. The "days-off" that we get are not only off work, but off everything serious. The American still nurses the hope with which he cameacross the ocean, and he is enthusiastically attached to the republic he has made and the principles of that republic.
I spent Decoration Day at Clearfield, a little mining and agricultural town on the other side of the Alleghanies. I put up at a hotel for two or three days, and just gave myself to the town for the time. Early on the festival day I was out to see how the workaday world was taking things. All the shops were closed except the ice-cream soda bars and the fruiterers. There were flags on the banks and loungers on the streets. Young men were walking about with flags in their hat ribbons. The cycles and automobiles on the roadway had their wheels swathed with the stars and stripes. There were negroes and negresses standingendimanche'sat street corners. Now and then a girl in white dress and white boots would trip from a house to a shop and back again. There was an air best expressed by the words of the song:
Go along and get yer ready,Get yer glad rags on,For there's going to be a meetingIn the good old town.
Go along and get yer ready,Get yer glad rags on,For there's going to be a meetingIn the good old town.
Go along and get yer ready,Get yer glad rags on,For there's going to be a meetingIn the good old town.
Go along and get yer ready,
Get yer glad rags on,
For there's going to be a meeting
In the good old town.
Every town in America is a good old town, and on such occasions as Decoration Day you may always hear the worthies of the place giving their reminiscences in the lounge of a hotel. I sat and listened to many.
We had a very quiet morning, and it seemed to me there was considerable boredom in the town. There was a fire in the Opera House about eleven, and I ran behind the scenes with a crowd of others and stared at the smoking walls. There was a sort of disappointment that the firemen put it out so promptly.
But after dinner the real holiday commenced, and the houses began to empty and the streets began to fill. About four o'clock the "Parade" commenced, what we should in England call a procession. Every one who owned a car had it out, carrying roses and ferns and flags. There was a continual hooting and coughing of motor-horns, and an increasing buzz of talk. The "Eighth Regimental Band" appeared, and stood with their instruments in the roadway, chatting to passers-by and being admired. The firemen came with new hats on—their work at the Opera House happily concluded. They now bore on their shoulders wreaths, which were to be carried to the graves of the heroes in the cemetery outside the town. The High School band formed up. A tall man brought a new-bought banner of the Stars and Stripes, which hung from a bird-headed pole. Boy Scouts came in costume—as it were in the rags of the war. The marching order was formed, and then came up what I thought to be the Town Militia, but which turned out to be the representatives of the Mechanics Union, with special decorations and medals on their breasts. Thebands began to play; the automobiles, full of flowers and flags, began to cough and shoot forward; the flocks of promenaders on the side-walk and in the roadway set themselves to march in step to the festal music. I watched the whole procession, from the Eighth Regimental Band that went first to the eight veterans of the Spanish War, who, with muskets on their shoulders, took up the rear. I stopped several people in the procession and asked them who they were, what exactly was their rôle, for what reason were they decorated with medals,—and every one was glad to satisfy my curiosity. I found that the eight veterans considered themselves technically a squad, and their function was to fire a salute over the graves of the "heroes."
The procession marched round the town to the strains of "Onward, Christian soldiers" and "O come, all ye faithful." All the people of Clearfield accompanied—Americans, Poles, Ruthenians, Slovaks—for Clearfield has its foreign mining population as well as its Anglo-Saxon urban Americans. As I was going alongside, a young boy ran up and put his hand on my shoulder and addressed me in Polish.
"What's that you say?" I asked.
"Vairy good!" said he, and pointed to the procession. "I like it."
"What are you,—Ruthenian, Polish?" I asked.
"Slavish."
I spoke to him in Russian.
"Oh-ho, he-he, da-da, I thought you were a Polak."
And now he thought I was a Russian! It touched me rather tenderly. I was dressed like an American, and my attire was not like that of a Russian at all. How enthusiastic this boy was! It was a real holiday for him. The Slav peoples are emotional; they need every now and then a means of publicly expressing their feelings. This procession from the town to the graveyard was a link with the customs of their native land, where at least twice a year the living have a feast among the crosses and mounds of the cemetery, and share their joys and interests with the dear dead, whose bodies have been given back to earth.
Among those accompanying the procession were Austrian Slavs, in soot-coloured, broad-brimmed, broken-crowned hats, not yet cast away; and I noted solemn-faced, placid Russian peasants in overalls staring with half-awakened comprehension. I saw a negro attired in faultless black cloth, having a bunchy umbrella in his hand, a heavy gold chain across his waistcoat, a cigar in his mouth, a soft smoky hat on his head. He tried to get to the front, and I heard one white man say to another, "Make way for him, it's notyourfuneral." The negro is a pretty important person—considering that the war was really fought for him. Perhaps not many actively remember that now; it is not soothing to do so. It is the Americanhero who matters more than the cause for which he fell; though of course America, the idea of America, matters more than either the heroes or the cause. It is a pity that on Decoration Day there is a tendency to decorate the graves of those who fell in the Spanish War and to pin medals on the survivors of that conflict rather than to perpetuate the memory of the struggle for the emancipation of the negro. America's great problem is the negro whom she has released; but the Spanish War meant no more than that America's arm proved strong enough to defeat a European power inclined to meddle with her civilisation.
It was, however, at the oldest grave in the cemetery that the procession stopped and the people gathered. All the men were uncovered, and there was a feeling of unusual respect and emotion in the crowd. The wreaths were put down and the flags lowered as the little memorial service commenced. We sang an old hymn, slowly, sweetly, and very sadly, so that one's very soul melted. A hymn of the war, I suppose:
Let him sleep,Calmly sleep,While the days and the years roll by.Let him sleep,Sweetly sleep,Till the call of the roll on high.
Let him sleep,Calmly sleep,While the days and the years roll by.Let him sleep,Sweetly sleep,Till the call of the roll on high.
Let him sleep,Calmly sleep,While the days and the years roll by.Let him sleep,Sweetly sleep,Till the call of the roll on high.
Let him sleep,
Calmly sleep,
While the days and the years roll by.
Let him sleep,
Sweetly sleep,
Till the call of the roll on high.
In the time of the war, in the dark hours of danger and distress, in the times of loss and appallingpersonal sorrow the Americans were very near and dear to God and to one another—nearer than they are to-day in their peace and prosperity.
When the hymn had been sung, an old grey-headed man came to the foot of the grave and read a portion of the speech made by Abraham Lincoln at the great cemetery at Gettysburg:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield ... to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who have given their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.But in a larger sense we cannot consecrate this ground. The dead themselves have consecrated it. It is rather for us, the living, to consecrate ourselves to the work they died for, that we resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield ... to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who have given their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot consecrate this ground. The dead themselves have consecrated it. It is rather for us, the living, to consecrate ourselves to the work they died for, that we resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
The reading of these words was most impressive. I realised in it the Gospel of America—something more national than even the starry flag.
When the reading was accomplished the eight veterans fired their salute, not up at heaven, but across and over the people's heads, as at an unseen enemy. Then the old grey-headed man who had read the words of Lincoln pronounced the blessing:
The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God....
The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God....
And we dispersed to wander among the graves and see the decorations, and add decorations of our own if we willed. Wherever I went, the haunting air was in my ears:
Let him sleep,Sweetly sleep,Till the call of the roll on high.
Let him sleep,Sweetly sleep,Till the call of the roll on high.
Let him sleep,Sweetly sleep,Till the call of the roll on high.
Let him sleep,
Sweetly sleep,
Till the call of the roll on high.
Americans believe very really in the roll-call. They believe that they will answer to their names on a great last day—"When the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there," says a popular hymn. It is all important to the American that he feels he lives and dies for the Right, for the moral virtues. The glory of the wars which the Americans have fought in their history is not only that they, the Americans, were victorious, but that they were morally right before ever they started out to fight.
Well, civilisation has approved the abolition of slavery. The great mass of people nowadays consider slavery as something wrong in itself. The North took up its weapons and convinced the South, and the negro was freed. The peculiar horrors of slavery no longer exist—no one man has power of life and death over the African. That much the war has achieved. But it is strange that for the rest thenegro seems to have become worse off, and that America feels that she cannot extend the personal privileges of democracy to the blacks. America has brutalised the nigger; has made of a very gentle, loving and lovable if very simple creature, an outcast, a beast, who may not sit beside an ordinary man. It has in its own nervous imagination accused him of hideous crimes which he did not commit, did not even imagine; it has deprived him of the law, tortured him, flayed him, burned him at the stake. It has made a black man a bogey; so that a fluttering white woman, finding herself alone in the presence of a negro, will rush away in terror, crying "murder," "rape," "fire," just because she has seen the whites of his eyes. Then the hot-blooded southern crowd comes out....
The war was a healthy war. It did much good, it strengthened the roots of many American families; it gave the nation a criterion for future development; it brought many individuals nearer to reality, brought them to the mystery of life, caused them to say each day their prayers to God. But if a war must be judged by its political effect, then as regards the happiness of the negro the war has not yet proved to be a success. The service by the graveside, and the apt words of Abraham Lincoln were a reminder to the American people that though they realise to themselves the maximum of prosperity the New World affords, and yet lose their souls, it profits them nothing.America by her unwritten but infallible charter is consecrated to freedom. If America is going to be true to itself it must work for freedom, it must carry out the idea of freedom. The emigrant from Europe expects to realise in America the idea of freedom, the opportunity for personal and individual development. He does not expect to find repeated there the caste system and relative industrial slavery of the East.
* * * * * * *
Clearfield was much touched by the graveside service. The whole evening after it the men in the hotel lounge talked American sentiment. The lads and lasses crowded into the cinema houses, and watched with much edification the specially instructive set of films which, on the recommendation of the town council, had been specially installed for the occasion,—the perils of life for a young girl going to dance-halls, the Soudanese at work, Japanese children at play, the ferocious habits of the hundred-legs, a review of troops at Tiflis, a portrait of the Governor of Mississippi wearing a high silk hat, pottery-making in North Borneo, the Pathé news. It was good to see so many pictures of foreign and dark-skinned people presented in an interesting and sympathetic manner. The Americans need to care more for the national life of other races. For they are often strangely contemptuous of the people they conceive to be wasting their time.
I had a pleasant talk with a doctor who was extremely keen on "temperance." He struck up acquaintance with me by complimenting me on my complexion, and betting I didn't touch spirituous liquors. "The war's still going on," said he. "I wage my part against drink and disease. I'd like to make the medical profession a poor one to enter, yes, sirr. I'd like to uproot disease, and if I could stop the drinking in America I'd do it. Never touch liquor and you'll never have gout, live to a good age, and be happy. I am glad to meet you, sir, glad to meet a Briton. America will stand shoulder and shoulder with the British in war or peace. They are of the same blood. The only two civilised nations in the world."
All the same, Clearfield regarded me with some suspicion, and as I sat at my bedroom window at night a young man called up:
"English Gawd: Lord Salisbury."
The men whom you meet during the day are like a hand of cards dealt out to you by Providence. But they are more than that, for you feel that luck does not enter into it. You feel there is no such thing as luck, and that the wayfarer is in his way a messenger sent to you by the hospitable spirit of man. He brings a sacred opportunity.
I sit tending my fire, and watching and balancing the kettle upon it; or I sit beside the cheerful blaze on which I have cooked my breakfast or my dinner, and I hold my mug of coffee in my hand and my piece of bread; I chip my just-boiled eggs, or I am digging into a pot of apple-jelly or cutting up a pine-apple, and I feel very tender towards the man who comes along the road and stops to pass a greeting and give and take the news of the day and the intelligence of the district.
There is a sort of hermit's charity. It is to have a spirit that is quietly joyful, to be in that state towards man that a gentle woodsman is towards the shy birds who are not afraid of him as he lies on a forest bankand watches them tripping to and from their little nests. Your fellow-man instinctively knows you and trusts you, and he puts aside the mask in which he takes refuge from other fellow-travellers who are alert and busy. I cherish as very precious all the little talks I had with this man and that man who came up to me in America.
As I sat one day by the side of my pleasant Susquehanna road, an oil-carrier met me, a gentle-voiced man in charge of four tons of kerosene and petrol, which his horses were dragging over the mountains from village to village and store to store. I was an opportunity to rest the horses, and the driver pulled up, relaxed his reins and entered into converse with me. Was I going far? Why was I tramping? What nationality was I? I told him what I was doing, and he said he would like to give up his job and do the same; he also was of British origin, though his mother was a German. He was a descendant of Sir Robert Downing. "There used to be many English about here," said he, "but they wore off." He went on to tell me what a wild district it had once been. His grandfather had shot a panther on the mountains. But there were no panthers now. The railways and the automobiles had frightened the wild things away. The change had come about very suddenly. He remembered when there were no telephone-poles along the road, but only road-poles. It used to be a posting-road,and a good one too; but now the automobiles had torn up all the surface, and no one would take any trouble about the needs of horse vehicles.
One hot noontide, on the road to Shippenville and Oil City, I was having luncheon when a very pleasant Swede came down the road carrying a bucket in his hand,—Mr. G. B. Olson, bossing a gang of workers on the highway. He was going down the hill to a special spring to draw water for his thirsty men, but he could hardly resist the smoke of my wayside fire, and he told me, as it seemed, his whole story. He had come to America in 1873, and had worked on a farm in Illinois before the great Chicago fire. He was twenty-four then, and was sixty-five now.
When he heard I was British he told me how he had come from EuropeviaLeith and Glasgow, and had been fifteen and a half days crossing the Atlantic.
"Have you ever been back to Sweden?" I asked.
"No, sirr, never."
"Are you content with America?"
"Yes, sirr; it's the finest country under the sun. It gives the working man a show."
"The Americans speak very kindly of your countrymen. They like them."
"Yes. We gave the Americans a good lift, we Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and Germans, by settling the land when the rest of the colonists were running to the towns. We came in and did the rough pioneerwork that had to be done if America was going to be more than a mushroom growth. Where would America be to-day if it were not for us in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa? You can't keep up big cities unless you've got plenty of men working in the background on the land."
The Swede went on to compliment me on my English. I spoke pretty clear for one who had been only three months in the country. He had met many British who spoke "very broken," especially Scotch. "I shouldn't have been able to understand them," said he, "but that I am a foreigner myself, and know what it is not to speak good."
"Well, I must be off," he added, and pointed to the bucket.
"You've got a gang of men working up above?"
"Yes. I'm bossing them for the State. A good job it is too, good money, and I don't have to work much."
"I should say you'd make a kind boss!"
"Yes. I never do anything against them. I get a good day's work out of the men, but I never put myself above them. I've got authority, that's all—it doesn't make me better'n they. I've got to boss them, they've got to work. That's how it's turned out.... Well, I must be off to water my hands!"
And he hastened away down the hill, whilst I put my things together and shouldered my pack.
The strange thing about this American journeywas the diversity of nationality I encountered, and the friendly terms in which it was possible for me as a man on the road to converse with them.
On leaving Clearfield I fell in with Peter Deemeff, a clever little Bulgarian immigrant, and spent two days in his company. He was an unpractical, rebellious boy, a student by inclination, but a labourer by necessity, nervous in temperament, and alternately gay and despondent. He was thin-bodied, broad-browed, clean-shaven, but blue-black with the multitude of his hair-roots; he had two rows of faultless, little, milk-white teeth; an angelic Bulgarian smile, and an occasional ugly American grimace.
We tramped along the most beautiful Susquehanna road to Curwenville, and then through magnificent gorges to the height of Luthersburg.
"Ho! Where you going?" said one of a group of Italian labourers at Curwenville.
"Oil City," I answered.
"You'll be sore," the Italian rejoined, and slapped his thigh. "Why not stop here and get good job?"
But Peter and I were not looking for a job just then, and we went on. I was glad the Bulgarian was not tempted, for I relished his company, and he was pleasantly loquacious.
"Do you like the Americans?" I asked him.
He raised his eyebrows. Evidently he did not like them very much.
"Half-civilise," said he. "When I say my boss, 'I go,' he want me fight. He offens me. I say, 'You Americans—bulldogs, no more, half-civilise.' And I go all the same and no fight great big fat American."
"You think Bulgaria a better country?"
"'S a poor country, that's all. There's more life in Europe. Americans don't know what they live for."
I looked with some astonishment on this day-labourer in shabby attire talking thus intelligently, and withal so frankly.
He told me he hated the English. They had said, anent the Balkan War, "The fruits must not be taken from the victors"; but when Montenegro took Scutari they were the first to say to King Nicholas "Go back, go back." He thought I was a Slav immigrant like himself, or he would not have struck up acquaintance with me. But he seemed relieved when I told him my sympathies were entirely with the Slavs.
We talked of Russian literature, and of Tolstoy in particular.
"Tolstoy understood about God," said he. "He said God is within you, not far away or everywhere, but in yourself. By that I understand life. All life springs from inside. What comes from outside is nahthing. That is how Americans live—in outside things, going to shows, baseball matches.... I know Shakespeare was the mirror of life, that's notwhat I mean.... To be educated mentally is light and life; to be developed only physically is death and.... That's why I say bulldogs, not civilise. When I was in Philadelphia I hear a Socialist in the Park and he asked, 'How d'ye fellows live?—eat—work, eat—work—drink, eat—work—sleep, eat—work—sleep. Machines, that's what y'are.'"
The most astonishing evidence of thought and culture that Peter Deemeff gave me was contained in a reflection he made half-aloud, in a pause in the conversation—"A great writer once said, 'If God had not existed, man would have invented his God'—that is a good idea, eh?" Fancy that from the lips of an unskilled labourer! These foreign working-men are bringing something new to America. If they only settle down to be American citizens and look after their children's education!
"Do many Bulgarians think?" I asked him.
"Yes, many—they think more than I do."
We spent the night under great rocks; he under one, I under another. My bed, which I made soft with last year's bracken, was under three immense boulders, a natural shelter, a deep dark cavern with an opening that looked across the river-gorge to the forested cliff on the other side. The Bulgarian, less careful about his comfort, lay in a ferny hollow, just sheltered by an overhanging stone. Before lying down he commended himself to God, and crossedhimself very delicately and trustfully. With all his philosophy he had not cast off the habits of the homeland. And almost directly he laid himself down he fell asleep.
It was a wonderful night. As I lay in my cave and the first star was looking down at me from over the great wooded cliff, what was my astonishment to see a living spark go past the entrance of the cave, a flame on wings—the firefly. I lay and watched the forest lose its trees, and the cliff become one great black wall, ragged all along the crest. Mists crept up and hid the wall for a while, and then passed. An hour and a half after I had lain down, and the Bulgarian had fallen asleep, I opened my eyes and looked out at the black wall—little lamps were momentarily appearing and disappearing far away in the mysterious dark depths of the cliff. It seemed to me that if when we die we perish utterly, then that living flame moving past my door was something like the passing of man's life. It was strange to lie on the plucked rustling bracken, and have the consciousness of the cold sepulchre-like roof of the cave, and look out at the figure of man's life. But the river chorus lulled me to sleep. Whenever I reawakened and looked out I saw the little lights once more, appearing and vanishing, like minutest sprites searching the forest with lanterns.
Peter and I woke almost at the same time in themorning in a dense mist. I sent him for water, and I collected wood for a fire. We made tea, took in warmth, and then set off once more.
"Let us go to a farmhouse and get some breakfast," said I.
"We get it most likely for nothing, because it's Sunday," said Peter with a smile.
The Americans are much more hospitable on Sundays than on week days. They do not, however, like to see you tramping the road on the day of rest; it is thought to be an infraction of the Sabbath—though it is difficult to see what tramps can do but tramp on a Sunday.
We had a splendid breakfast for ten cents apiece at a stock-breeding farm below Luthersburg,—pork and beans, bread and butter and cookies, strawberry jam and home-canned plums, pear-jelly. I thanked the lady of the establishment when we had finished, and remarked that I thought it very cheap at the price. She answered that she didn't serve out lunches for a profit, but wouldn't let decent men pass hungry.
"Are you hiking to the next burg?" she asked.
"Chicago," said I.
"Gee!"
We came to Luthersburg, high up on the crest of the hills, a large village, with two severe-looking churches.
"When I see these narrow spires I'm afraid," saidthe Bulgarian. "I should have to wither my soul and make it small to get into one of these churches. I like a church with walls of praise and a spire of yearning,—Tolstoy, eh? That spire says to me 'I feared Thee, O God, because Thou art an austere man.'"
I, for my part, thought it strange that Americans, taking so many risks in business, and daring and imagining so large-heartedly in the secular world, should be satisfied with so cramped an expression of their religion.
Peter and I went down on the other side of the hills to Helvetia, the first town in a wild coaling district, a place of many Austrians, Poles, and Huns. It was the Sunday evening promenade, and every one was out of doors, hundreds of miners and labourers in straight-creased trousers (how soon obtained) and cheap felt hats, a similar number of dark, interesting-looking Polish girls in their gaudy Sunday best. We passed a hundred yards of grey coke-ovens glowing at all their doors and emitting hundreds of fires and flames. Peter seemed unusually attracted by the coke-ovens or by the Slav population, and he decided to remain at Helvetia and seek for a job on the morrow. So I accompanied him into a "boarding-house," and was ready to spend the night with him. But when I saw the accommodation of coaly beds I cried off. So the Bulgarian and I parted. I went on to Sykesvilleand the Hotel Sykes. Obviously I was in America,—fancy calling a hotel in England "Hotel Sykes." But I did not stay there, preferring to hasten up country and get a long step beyond black breaker-towers, the sooty inclines up which trucks ran from the mines, the coke-ovens, the fields full of black stumps and rotting grass, the seemingly poverty-stricken frame-buildings, and more dirt and misery than you would see even in a bad district in Russia. It surprised me to see the Sunday clothes of Sykesville, the white collars, the bright red ties, the blue serge trousers with creases, the bowler hats, and American smiles. Despite all the dirt, these new-come immigrants sayYesto American life and American hopes. But to my eyes it was a terrible place in which to live. It was an astonishing change, moreover, to pass from the magnificent loveliness of the Susquehanna gorges to this inferno of a colliery. But I managed to pass out of this region almost as quickly as I came into it, and next day was in the lovely country about Reynoldsville; and I tramped through beautiful agricultural or forested country to the bright towns of Brookville, Clarion, and Shippenville, clean, new, handsome settlements, with green lawns, shady avenues, fine houses, and well-stocked shops. In such places I saw America at its best, just as at Helvetia and Sykesville I saw it at about its worst. I suppose Sykesville will never be made as beautiful as Brookville;the one is the coal-cellar, the other is the drawing-room in the house of modern America.
But I had definitely left the coal region behind, now I was striking north, for oil. In three days I came into Oil City, so wonderfully situated on the wide and stately Alleghany river—the river having brown rings here and there, glimmering with wandering oil. The city is built up five or six hills, and is only a unity by virtue of its fine bridges. It is a clean town compared with Scranton, as oil is cleaner to deal with than coal. But the houses are more ramshackle. The poor people's dwellings suggest to the eye that they were made in a great hurry many years ago, and are now falling to bits; they are set one behind another up the hills, and you climb to them by wooden stairways. Some seem veritably tumbling down the hill. There were a fair number of foreign immigrants there, mostly Italians; but the oil business seems to be worked by Americans, the foreigners being too stupid to understand. Oil City is a cheap town to live in. I was boarded at a hotel for a dollar a day; and when I bought provisions for my next tramp to Erie Shore I found everything cheaper than in Eastern Pennsylvania. There appeared to be little cultured life, however, no theatre but the cinema, and little offered for sale in the shape of books.
I set out for Meadville on the "Meadville Pike." A feature of the new landscape and of the road andfields was the oil-pump, working all by itself, the long cables, connecting the pump with the engine, often coming across the roadway, thejig, jig, jigof the pumping movement, theclump, clump, clump, stumpof the engine—the pulse of the industrial countryside.
I met a Dutchman. He asked:
"What's on? What is it for?"
I told him I was studying the emerging American, and he told me what a menace the fecund Slavs were to the barren Americans. According to him the extinction of the American was a matter of mathematics.
I came upon an enormous gang of Americans, Russians, Slavs, Italians at work on the highroad, digging it out, laying a bed of mortar, putting down bricks; some hundreds of workmen, extending over a mile and a half of closed road. Many of the American workmen were dressed as smartly as stockbrokers' clerks and city men, and they kept themselves neat and clean—a new phenomenon in labouring. Americans, however, were working together, Italians together, and Russians together. A fine-looking American workman said to me knowingly, "You can photograph me if you like, but the Guineas won't want to be photographed—most of them shot some one sometime or other, you bet!"