第39章 A Michigan Man(2)

The conductor stopped by Luther's seat and said that they were in the city at last;but it seemed to the sick man as if they went miles after that,with a multitude of twinkling lights on one side and a blank darkness,that they told him was the lake,on the other.The conductor again stopped by his seat.

"Well,my man,"said he,"how are you feeling?"Luther,the possessor of the toughest muscles in.the gang,felt a sick man's irri-tation at the tone of pity.

"Oh,I'm all right!"he said,gruffly,and shook off the assistance the conductor tried to offer with his overcoat."I'm going to my sister's,"he explained,in answer to the inquiry as to where he was going.The man,somewhat piqued at the spirit in which his overtures were met,left him,and Luther stepped on to the platform.There was a long vista of semi-light,down which crowds of people walked and baggage-men rushed.The building,if it deserved the name,seemed a ruin,and through the arched doors Luther could see men --hackmen --dancing and howling like dervishes.Trains were coming and going,and the whistles and bells kept up a ceaseless clangor.

Luther,with his small satchel and uncouth dress,slouched by the crowd unnoticed,and reached the street.He walked amid such an illumination as he had never dreamed of,and paused half blinded in the glare of a broad sheet of electric light that filled a pillared entrance into which many people passed.He looked about him.Above on every side rose great,many-windowed build-ings;on the street the cars and carriages thronged,and jostling crowds dashed head-long among the vehicles.After a time he turned down a street that seemed to him a pandemonium filled with madmen.It went to his head like wine,and hardly left him the presence of mind to sustain a quiet exterior.The wind was laden with a pene-trating moisture that chilled him as the dry icy breezes from Huron never had done,and the pain in his lungs made him faint and dizzy.He wondered if his red-cheeked little sister could live in one of those vast,impregnable buildings.He thought of stopping some of those serious-looking men and asking them if they knew her;but he could not muster up the courage.The distressing experience that comes to almost every one some time in life,of losing all identity in the universal humanity,was becoming his.The tears began to roll down his wasted face from loneliness and exhaustion.He grew hungry with longing for the dirty but familiar cabins of the camp,and staggered along with eyes half closed,conjuring visions of the warm inte-riors,the leaping fires,the groups of laughing men seen dimly through clouds of tobacco-smoke.

A delicious scent of coffee met his hungry sense and made him really think he was taking the savory black draught from his familiar tin cup;but the muddy streets,the blinding lights,the cruel,rushing peo-ple,were still there.The buildings,how-ever,now became different.They were lower and meaner,with dirty windows.

Women laughing loudly crowded about the doors,and the establishments seemed to be equally divided between saloon-keepers,pawnbrokers,and dealers in second-hand clothes.Luther wondered where they all drew their support from.Upon one sign-board he read,"Lodgings 10cents to 50cents.A Square Meal for 15cents,"and,thankful for some haven,entered.Here he spent his first night and other nights,while his purse dwindled and his strength waned.

At last he got a man in a drug-store to search the directory for his sister's resi-dence.They found a name he took to be his brother-in-law's.It was two days later when he found the address,--a great,many-storied mansion on one of the southern boulevards,--and found also that his search had been in vain.Sore and faint,he stag-gered back to his miserable shelter,only to arise feverish and ill in the morning.He frequented the great shop doors,thronged with brilliantly-dressed ladies,and watched to see if his little sister might not dash up in one of those satin-lined coaches and take him where he would be warm and safe and would sleep undisturbed by drunken,ribald songs and loathsome surroundings.There were days when he almost forgot his name,and,striving to remember,would lose his senses for a moment and drift back to the harmonious solitudes of the North and breathe the resin-scented frosty atmosphere.

He grew terrified at the blood he coughed from his lacerated lungs,and wondered bit-terly why the boys did not come to take him home.