My Life

ugh to look about him, a strange collection of men of all ages, sizes and make-ups, huddled together nights in a musty cellar only a few steps from the North German Lloyd

hat have passed the sign has been blown away, and a barber to-day holds forth where the "Bankrupps" formerly lodged. The store above, a general furnishing establishment for emigrants and immigrants, has also given way to a saloon, I think, and the outfitting business of former days has developed, in the hands of the old proprietor's sons, into a general banking and exc

ed so fat and comfortable and money was so plainly his friend and benefactor that he was a pretty prosaic representative of his race. I had hea

unacquainted with tramp life. They may mean disease, of course, but more frequently good health, and in my case it was decidedly the latter. Whatever else hoboing had done or failed to do for me, it had steeled my muscles, tightened up my nerve, and jostled my self-reliance into a thoroughly working condition. Many a vacation in recent years, so far as mere health is concerned, might have been spent with profit on the Road. But eighteen years ago it was a different matter. Die Ferne as such was at le

busted" Europeans, who were prepared to work their way back to their old country homes as coal-passers. The sailor said that any one, European or not, was welc

-day as they were years ago. "Du bist zu schwach" (you are too weak), he told me on hearing of my desire for a coal trimm

s my look-out. See here! I'll give you two dollars besid

"Vell," the man returned at last, "you can sle

awaiting my chance (a hopeless one it seemed) with the other incapables that the ships' doctors had refused to pass. The Italian lad, with his sweet tenor voice and sunny temperament, helped to brighten the life in the daytime and early evening, but the dark hours of the night, full of the groans and sighs of the old men, trying fo

land," was the claim of practically all of the inmates of the cellar, except the little Italian. He liked Neuvo Yorko, malto una citt bellissima-but he wanted to see his mother and Itallia once more. Then he was

e money due. They take my crops-all I had. No! America no good for me. I go back see my daughter. Norway better." I wonder where the poor old soul is, if he be still on earth. Ship after ship went out, but there was

when our berths on the steamers would be ready constituted our day's work, and left us at night, too tired out to know or care much whether we were lying on feathers or iron. I have since had many a restful night in

ugging away at my jacket. "Get up, fratello," he persisted. "Mucha good news." The light was struggling in through the cobwebbed w

ews?" I yawned, and

right front here. Blood on the sidewalk. Firemen and passers are pinched. Ship-she call the Elbe-sh

al-passers immediately and the fact that we were the handiest materials. What a change came over the man's

?" he ask

The men are a

waddled over to the North German Lloyd docks to assure himself that the news was correct-that the Italian had not made a mistake on account of using som

in. "This time you go, ganz sicher. You a very lucky boy. Te

schwach," the Hebrew thundered in reply to the man's entreaties to be taken, and once more he slunk away to his corner, weeping. Th

the dock to the Elbe's gang-plank, where the ship's doctor awaited us. The stoke-room was so short-handed that the man was forced to accept all of us, something that he certainly would not have done had there been a larger collection of men to choose from. He smiled significa

a, sure. You can't stand the work. Just wait and see," he warned, as if

" he went on, "and

ng w

up and learnin

indness, but insisted t

it were the last "filler-in" I should ever have on land. When we were all in line, and marching to the sh

As it is, I am a poor struggler still-but for the time being unmolested by mosquitoes, thank heaven. Many and many times after our good ship had put to sea, and we had all been initiated in our work, I remembered my friend, the saloonkeeper, and temporarily regretted that I had not thrown my lot with his concern. Now, I know that it was all for the best that the coal-passer'

en told us off to our different watches. An officer, passing at this ti

jovially. "The heat will sweat '

were born laggards and sneaks, throwing all the work they could shirk on others who were honestly trying to do their best. It is trite

four in the afternoon; the rest of the time was my own, excepting

ligence and not worth considering in the general scheme of things, going down that series of ladders into the bowels of the old Elbe, the heat seemingly jumping ten degrees a ladder, gave my cock-sure disposal of hell a severe jolt. I th

raised it from the floor, and got it started into the ashes-and then dropped none too neatly on top of it. "Hurry up, you sow-pig," the fireman yelled, and I struggled again with the terrible poker, finally managing to rake out the ashes. Then came "ash heave," the Elbe having the old bucket system for the job. Great metal pails were let down to us from above through a ventilator. The pails filled, they were hauled up again, dumped and the

nd me struggling with a full basket, in the alleyway between the hot boilers. "Further with the coals," he cried; "further!" accompanying the command with what he termed a "swat" on my head with his sweat-rag. I was tired out, mentally and physically, my head was dizzy, and my legs wobbled. For one very short second, after the fireman had hit me, I came very near losing control of myself, and doing something very reckless. That sweat-rag "swat" had aroused whatever was left in me of manhood, honor and pride, and I looked the fireman in the eye with murder in my own. He turned, and I was just about to reach for a large piece of coal and let him have it, when such vestige

ng the men. Scrappy conversations were heard, and occasionally a laugh-a hoarse, vulgar, coal-dust laugh might be distinguished from the general noise. Our watch was composed of as rough a set of men as I have ever worked with. Every move they made was accompanied with a curse, and the fireme

asions, the firemen being quite as happy as the inexperienced trimmers. My little Italian friend used to sing "Santa Lucia" on nearly every climb bathwards and bunkwards. A wash-down awaited all of us at the top, and soon after a sumptuous meal, in quantity and

ainfully sore from cinders getting into them, and I was generally pretty well used up. Other men had b

lt mainly on my sore eyes, tellin

the lids in turn, washing out each ey

he blackened cloth. It would have paid to tell him that th

hat direction. The worst he could do to my back was to put a plaster on it,

" was all he would re

sick, sick all over. I need at

an became

ok, and what not. We're terribly short-handed. If you don't keep your watc

unequivocally necessary, then of course I must do my utmost to save the lives, perhaps, of the precious freight in the c

stors, but this fact did not interest me one-half so much as the far more important fact that they represented terra firma. I wanted to put my feet on land again, even in Turkey if necessary. Coal-passing, bunker life, hot fires, and clanging ash buckets had cured

free to mingle with the steerage passengers on deck and view the new country I had traveled so far to see. My clothes were the same that I had gone on board with in Hoboken-a fairly respectable outfit then, but now sadly in need of

whole manner had changed. His duty was over, the great shi

dly manner, his eyes running hurriedly over my clo

ve got," I replied, and for aught I could see just then th

bring the ship into port, and then separated, five minutes and a kindly manner on the part of the fireman having been quite sufficient to scatter forever, I trust, all the murderous thoughts of revenge I had been a week and more storing up again

was behind us, money was "in sight," and the majority of the men were at home again. We received seventeen marks and fifty pfennigs apiece for the trip, four dollars and a fraction in American currency. We bade one another

entirely in the bunkers? What is more natural than that when ashore he should try to forget some of the hard knocks, sweat and dust in the stoke-room, in a carousal in the open? What, indeed, has all the turmoil below been suffered for if not to allow such indulgence on land? The moralist, the economist, the Sabbatarian doubtless have their individual answers to these queries. All I know about the questions and my relation to them at the time of leaving the Elbe in Bremerhaven is that, my ticket for Berlin secured and two spare marks slyly hidden away in case of an emergency, prudence, temperance and economy were utterly disregarded. I sang, laughed and feasted with my friends to the limit of my financial and physical capacity, and I cannot recall having enjoyed a more righteous "good" time on a dollar and a half in all my life. So, hard though the voyage

teen, if not eighteen hours. A more humble home-coming could hardly be imagined, and I wasted no mental efforts in trying to increase the humility by imagining anything. At Celli there was some diversion in waiting an hour or two, and in listening to the gabble of a little Jewish tramp bound for Nürnberg. He had just come from America, he claimed, by way of E

at a pump, to get rid of the steamer dust and grime, but this effort left no marked improvement in my appearanc

"so'm I. Can't you help me o

or the sake of America," he whined, and foolish sentimentalist that I was, I gave him the money, although he already had more than I did. He said that the five cents was necessary to complete his evening fund for supper and lodging. I refer to this lad because he is typica

s) for a street-car ride, was sorrier, if that be possible than had been the journey from Bremen. One thing I had carefully preserved, however, my mother's address. Askin

an to the story. He knew that my people were foreigners, and he knew so little else of any account, as I learned later, that, in spite of my looks, he doubtless reasoned that Americans are permitted all kinds

marched, the good man looking at me furtively under his brows every now and then, evide

essengers. I forgot my grammar, my looks, everything in fact except that on the other sid

e, and I entered a home which, next to the old brown house in our Middle West,