America breathed kindness. New York seemed to me more friendly and hospitable than any other great city I had lived in. There also, as in Russia, one person came out and took me by the hand, and was America to me. But when I shed respectability and the cheap fame of having one's portrait and pages of "write-up” in the papers and put pack on back, and sallied forth merely as a man I found that the other and more precious kind of hospitality was not easily come by. Little is given anonymously in the United States. Not that the country people despise the tramp, or hate him or set the dogs on him or even refuse him a breakfast now and then, but that they simply won't have him in their houses for the night, and are otherwise indifferent to his hardships. They do not look on the stranger as a fellow-man but as a loose wheel, a utility lying rusting in a field; or at best they look upon him as a man who will "make good," who will get a job later on and earn his living. No one is good enough for the American till he has "made good." But this is the same in all commercialised countries, commercialism kills the old Christian charity, the hospitality of house and mind and heart. In the old colonial days there was extraordinary hospitality in America, and this still survives in the West and North and South in places out of touch with the great industrial beehive of the East and Centre. The feeling still survives in the spirit that prevents Americans printing prohibitions. You never see the notice "Trespassers will be Prosecuted," though I do not know what one is to make of the uncharitable poster that frequently met my gaze in Indiana and Illinois: That is brutal. KEEP OUT! THAT MEANS YOU. Tramping up to Williamsport from Scranton I encountered forty-eight hours' rain, and only with difficulty on the second night did I obtain shelter. After being refused three times the first rainy evening, I found an old covered well beside an empty, padlocked shed. In this I spent twenty hours, sleeping the night and waking to a day of down-pour. It was an interesting little hermitage, the three walls were of stone but the roof and floor of wood. One side of the building was completely open to wind and weather. In a corner was a dark square of clear water the well. Half-way up the stone wall was a narrow ledge, and there I slept. I covered the ledge with two sacks, for pillow I had a book, a duplicate pair of boots, and a silken scarf. I slept with my feet in a sack and a thick tweed coat spread over the rest of me, slept well. By day I sat on a box and looked out at a deserted garden, and the rain pouring on the trees and rank grass. There were young pines and hemlocks and maples, and a shaggy hickory tree. Beyond them an apple orchard climbed over a very green hill, and the branches were all crooked and gnarled and pointing. The blossoms had shed their petals, and there was much young fruit. I gathered dry wood and made a fire on the threshold, and dried wet wood and boiled a kettle, the smoke blowing in to me all the while, and the raindrops hissing and dying as they fell into the embers. About mid-day a Dutch farmer came and stood in front of the little house, and stared for some minutes and said nought. I hailed him: "Good-day!" He did not reply to this but inquired: "Hev you not seen that notice on the wall- 'Any one meddling with this house will be treated as he deserves'?" I had not. "Waal," said he, "it's there. So you'll put that fire out." I complied. "It's a wet day," said I. "Yes, it's wet." "I'd like to get put up for the night somewhere, and get a good meal. Do you know of any one who would do it?" He was silent for some while, and stared at me as if irritated, and then he said: |