ubts, but
we kept our wits, remained upon the rails, and at last spun round the
final bend and came to a halt upon a level stretch of track, just above
the little station.

There, kicking aside our faithful plank, we took up our valises and with
trembling knees and a sense of triumph set off down the valley of the
wild Amonoosuc.

CHAPTER XXIV

Tramping, New York, Washington, and Chicago

For two days we followed the Amonoosuc (which is a lovely stream),
tramping along exquisite winding roads, loitering by sunny ripples or
dreaming in the shadow of magnificent elms. It was all very, very
beautiful to us of the level lands of Iowa and Dakota. These brooks
rushing over their rocky beds, these stately trees and these bleak
mountain-tops looming behind us, all glowed with the high splendor, of
which we had dreamed.

At noon we called at a farm-house to get something to eat and at night
we paid for lodging in a rude tavern beside the way, and so at last
reached the railway and the Connecticut River. Here we gained our trunks
(which had been sent round by express) and as the country seemed poor
and the farms barren, we spent nearly all our money in riding down the
railway fifty or sixty miles. At some small town (I forget the name), we
again took to the winding roads, looking for a job.

Jobs, it turned out, were exceedingly hard to get. The haying was over,
the oats mainly in shock, and the people on the highway suspicious and
inhospitable. As we plodded along, our dimes melting away, hunger came,
at last, to be a grim reality. We looked less and less like college boys
and more and more like tramps, and the householders began to treat us
with hostile contempt.

No doubt these farmers, much beset with tramps, had reasonable excuse
for their inhospitable ways, but to us it was all bitter and uncalled
for. I knew that cities were filled with robbers, brigands, burglars and
pirates, but I had held (up to this time), the belief that the country,
though rude and barren of luxury was nevertheless a place of plenty
where no man need suffer hunger.

Frank, being younger and less hardy than I, became clean disheartened,
and upon me fell the responsibility and burden of the campaign. I
certainly was to blame for our predicament.

We came finally to the point of calling at every house where any crops
lay ungathered, desperately in hope of securing something to do. At last
there came a time when we no longer had money