A Michigan Man | Page 3

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 interiors, 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 people,
were still there. The buildings, however, 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 signboard he read, "Lodgings 10 cents to 50
cents. A Square Meal for 15 cents," 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 residence. 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 staggered 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 bitterly why the boys did not come to take him home.
One day, as he painfully dragged himself down a residence street, he
tried to collect his thoughts and form some plan for the future. He had
no trade, understood no handiwork: he could fell trees! He looked at the
gaunt, scrawny, transplanted specimens that met his eye, and gave
himself up to the homesickness that filled his soul. He slept that night
in the shelter of a stable, and spent his last money in the morning for a
biscuit.
He traveled many miles that afternoon looking for something to which
he might turn his hand. Once he got permission to carry a hod for half
an hour. At the end of that time he fainted. When he recovered, the
foreman paid him twenty-five cents. "For God's sake, man, go home,"
he said. Luther stared at him with a white face and went on.

There came days when he so forgot his native dignity as to beg. He
seldom received anything; he was referred to various charitable
institutions whose existence he had never heard of.
One morning, when a pall of smoke enveloped the city and the odors of
coal-gas refused to lift their nauseating poison through the heavy air,
Luther, chilled with dew and famished, awoke to a happier life. The
loneliness at his heart was gone. The feeling of hopeless imprisonment
that the miles and miles of streets had terrified him with gave place to
one of freedom and exaltation. Above him he heard the rasping of pine
boughs; his feet trod on a rebounding mat of decay; the sky was as
coldly blue as the bosom of Huron. He walked as if on ether, singing a
senseless jargon the woodmen had aroused the echoes with:
"Hi yi halloo! The owl sees you! Look what you do! Hi yi halloo!"
Swung over his shoulder was a stick he had used to assist his limping
gait, but now transformed into the beloved axe. He would reach the
clearing soon, he thought, and strode on like a giant, while people
hurried from his path. Suddenly a smooth trunk, stripped of its bark and
bleached by weather, arose before him.
"Hi yi halloo!" High went the wasted arm--crash!--a broken staff, a
jingle of wires, a maddened, shouting man the centre of a group of
amused spectators! 'A few moments later, four broad-shouldered men
in blue had him in their grasp, pinioned and guarded, clattering over the