had studied four languages,
English, the most important of all tongues, was entirely unknown to me.

The first few weeks of our stay in Boston passed quietly and quickly,
but the ague grew worse and my purse was getting empty. My friend,
however, had more money than I, and as long as he had a dollar left he
divided it equally between us. I cannot resist the temptation to relate
a serio-comical escapade of this period, one that to many will recall
similar occurences in their own experience as immigrants ignorant of the
language of the country.

In Gothenburg we had become acquainted with a bright young man from
Vexioe, Janne Tenggren by name, who had also served in the army. When we
met him he had already bought a ticket on a sailing vessel bound for
New York, so that we could not make the voyage together. But we agreed
to hunt each other up after our arrival in America. We left Sweden about
the same time with the understanding that if we arrived first we should
meet him in New York, and if he arrived first he should go to Boston to
meet us there.

About a week after our arrival in Boston, we heard that the vessel on
which he had embarked had arrived, and I immediately left for New York
to fulfill our promise. But, unfortunately, I found he had already gone
west, so I bought a return ticket to Boston the same day. The journey
was by steamboat to Fall River, thence by rail to Boston. We left New
York in the evening. I remained on the deck, and went to sleep about ten
o'clock on some wooden boxes. About eleven o'clock I awoke, saw the
steamer laying to and, supposing we were at Fall River, hurried off and
followed the largest crowd, expecting thus to get to the railroad depot.
Striking no depot, however, I returned to the harbor, only to find the
steamer gone, and everybody but myself had vanished from the pier.

There I stood, in the middle of the night, without money, ignorant of
the language, and not even knowing where I was! Tired and discouraged I
finally threw myself down on a wooden box on the sidewalk, and went to
sleep. About five o'clock in the morning a big policeman aroused me by
poking at me with his club. This respectable incarnation of social order
evidently took me for a tramp or a madman, and as he could not obtain
any intelligible information from me in any language known to him, he
took me to a small shoe store kept by a German.

Fortunately, my acquaintance with the German language was sufficient to