ter
good-bye without feeling in the least heroic or self-confident. At the
moment sadness weakened me, reducing me to boyish timidity.

CHAPTER XXVI

On to Boston

With plenty of time to think, I thought, crouched low in my seat silent
as an owl. True, I dozed off now and again but even when shortened by
these periods of forgetfulness, the journey seemed interminable and when
I reached the grimy old shed of a station which was the Chicago terminal
of the Northwestern in those days, I was glad of a chance to taste
outside air, no matter how smoky it reported itself to be.

My brother, who was working in the office of a weekly farm journal, met
me with an air of calm superiority. He had become a true Chicagoan.
Under his confident leadership I soon found a boarding place and a
measure of repose. I must have stayed with him for several days for I
recall being hypnotized into ordering a twenty-dollar tailor-made suit
from a South Clark street merchant--you know the kind. It was a "Prince
Albert Soot"--my first made-to-order outfit, but the extravagance seemed
justified in face of the known elegance of man's apparel in Boston.

It took me thirty-six hours more to get to Boston, and as I was ill all
the way (I again rode in the smoking car) a less triumphant Jason never
entered the City of Light and Learning. The day was a true November day,
dark and rainy and cold, and when I confronted my cloud-built city of
domes and towers I was concerned only with a place to sleep--I had
little desire of battle and no remembrance of the Golden Fleece.

Up from the Hoosac Station and over the slimy, greasy pavement I trod
with humped back, carrying my heavy valise (it was the same
imitation-leather concern with which I had toured the city two years
before), while gay little street cars tinkled by, so close to my
shoulder that I could have touched them with my hand.

Again I found my way through Haymarket Square to Tremont street and so
at last to the Common, which presented a cold and dismal face at this
time. The glory of my dream had fled. The trees, bare and brown and
dripping with rain, offered no shelter. The benches were sodden, the
paths muddy, and the sky, lost in a desolate mist shut down over my head
with oppressive weight. I crawled along the muddy walk feeling about as
important as a belated beetle in a July thunderstorm. Half of me was
ready to surrender and go home on the next train but the other half, the
ob