ice that it was a milk-wagon. The sun had not risen yet when the
driver came, unceremoniously dragged me out by the feet, and dumped me
into the gutter. On I went with my gripsack, straight ahead, until
toward noon I reached Fordham College, famished and footsore. I had
eaten nothing since the previous day, and had vainly tried to make a
bath in the Bronx River do for breakfast. Not yet could I cheat my
stomach that way.

The college gates were open, and I strolled wearily in, without aim or
purpose. On a lawn some young men were engaged in athletic exercises,
and I stopped to look and admire the beautiful shade-trees and the
imposing building. So at least it seems to me at this distance. An
old monk in a cowl, whose noble face I sometimes recall in my dreams,
came over and asked kindly if I was not hungry. I was in all
conscience fearfully hungry, and I said so, though I did not mean to.
I had never seen a real live monk before, and my Lutheran training had
not exactly inclined me in their favor. I ate of the food set before
me, not without qualms of conscience, and with a secret suspicion that
I would next be asked to abjure my faith, or at least do homage to the
Virgin Mary, which I was firmly resolved not to do. But when, the meal
finished, I was sent on my way with enough to do me for supper, without
the least allusion having been made to my soul, I felt heartily ashamed
of myself. I am just as good a Protestant as I ever was. Among my own
I am a kind of heretic even, because I cannot put up with the apostolic
succession; but I have no quarrel with the excellent charities of the
Roman Church, or with the noble spirit that animated them. I learned
that lesson at Fordham thirty years ago.

Up the railroad track I went, and at night hired out to a truck-farmer,
with the freedom of his hay-mow for my sleeping quarters. But when I
had hoed cucumbers three days in a scorching sun, till my back ached as
if it were going to break, and the farmer guessed that he would call it
square for three shillings, I went farther. A man is not necessarily a
philanthropist, it seems, because he tills the soil. I did not hire
out again. I did odd jobs to earn my meals, and slept in the fields at
night, still turning over in my mind how to get across the sea. An
incident of those wanderings comes to mind while I am writing. They
were carting in hay, and when night came on, somewhere about Mount
Vernon, I gathered an ar