The men whom you meet during the day are like a hand of cards dealt out to you by Providence. But they are more than that, for you feel that luck does not enter into it. You feel there is no such thing as luck, and that the wayfarer is in his way a messenger sent to you by the hospitable spirit of man. He brings a sacred opportunity.  
I sit tending my fire, and watching and balancing the kettle upon it; or I sit beside the cheerful blaze on which I have cooked my breakfast or my dinner, and I hold my mug of coffee in my hand and my piece of bread; I chip my just-boiled eggs, or I am digging into a pot of apple-jelly or cutting up a pine-apple, and I feel very tender towards the man who comes along the road and stops to pass a greeting and give and take the news of the day and the intelligence of the district.
 
There is a sort of hermit's charity. It is to have a spirit that is quietly joyful, to be in that state towards man that a gentle woodsman is towards the shy birds who are not afraid of him as he lies on a forest bank[Pg 189] and watches them tripping to and from their little nests. Your fellow-man instinctively knows you and trusts you, and he puts aside the mask in which he takes refuge from other fellow-travellers who are alert and busy. I cherish as very precious all the little talks I had with this man and that man who came up to me in America.
 
As I sat one day by the side of my pleasant Susquehanna road, an oil-carrier met me, a gentle-voiced man in charge of four tons of kerosene and petrol, which his horses were dragging over the mountains from village to village and store to store. I was an opportunity to rest the horses, and the driver pulled up, relaxed his reins and entered into converse with me. Was I going far? Why was I tramping? What nationality was I? I told him what I was doing, and he said he would like to give up his job and do the same; he also was of British origin, though his mother was a German. He was a descendant of Sir Robert Downing. "There used to be many English about here," said he, "but they wore off." He went on to tell me what a wild district it had once been. His grandfather had shot a panther on the mountains. But there were no panthers now. The railways and the automobiles had frightened the wild things away. The change had come about very suddenly. He remembered when there were no telephone-poles along the road, but only road-poles. It used to be a posting-road, [Pg 190]and a good one too; but now the automobiles had torn up all the surface, and no one would take any trouble about the needs of horse vehicles.
 
One hot noontide, on the road to Shippenville and Oil City, I was having luncheon when a very pleasant Swede came down the road carrying a bucket in his hand,—Mr. G. B. Olson, bossing a gang of workers on the highway. He was going down the hill to a special spring to draw water for his thirsty men, but he could hardly resist the smoke of my wayside fire, and he told me, as it seemed, his whole story. He had come to America in 1873, and had worked on a farm in Illinois before the great Chicago fire. He was twenty-four then, and was sixty-five now.
 
When he heard I was British he told me how he had come from Europe via Leith and Glasgow, and had been fifteen and a half days crossing the Atlantic.
 
"Have you ever been back to Sweden?" I asked.
 
"No, sirr, never."
 
"Are you content with America?"
 
"Yes, sirr; it's the finest country under the sun. It gives the working man a show."
 
"The Americans speak very kindly of your countrymen. They like them."
 
"Yes. We gave the Americans a good lift, we Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and Germans, by settling the land when the rest of the colonists were running to the towns. We came in and did the rough pioneer[Pg 191] work that had to be done if America was going to be more than a mushroom growth. Where would America be to-day if it were not for us in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa? You can't keep up big cities unless you've got plenty of men working in the background on the land."
 
The Swede went on to compliment me on my English. I spoke pretty clear for one who had been only three months in the country. He had met many British who spoke "very broken," especially Scotch. "I shouldn't have been able to understand them," said he, "but that I am a foreigner myself, and know what it is not to speak good."
 
"Well, I must be off," he added, and pointed to the bucket.
 
"You've got a gang of men working up above?"
 
"Yes. I'm bossing them for the State. A good job it is too, good money, and I don't have to work much."
 
"I should say you'd make a kind boss!"
 
"Yes. I never do anything against them. I get a good day's work out of the men, but I never put myself above them. I've got authority, that's all—it doesn't make me better'n they. I've got to boss them, they've got to work. That's how it's turned out.... Well, I must be off to water my hands!"
 
And he hastened away down the hill, whilst I put my things together and shouldered my pack.
 
The strange thing about this American journey[Pg 192] was the diversity of nationality I encountered, and the friendly terms in which it was possible for me as a man on the road to converse with them.
 
On leaving Clearfield I fell in with Peter Deemeff, a clever little Bulgarian immigrant, and spent two days in his company. He was an unpractical, rebellious boy, a student by inclination, but a labourer by necessity, nervous in temperament, and alternately gay and despondent. He was thin-bodied, broad-browed, clean-shaven, but blue-black with the multitude of his hair-roots; he had two rows of faultless, little, milk-white teeth; an angelic Bulgarian smile, and an occasional ugly American grimace.
 
We tramped along the most beautiful Susquehanna road to Curwenville, and then through magnificent gorges to the height of Luthersburg.
 
"Ho! Where you going?" said one of a group of Italian labourers at Curwenville.
 
"Oil City," I answered.
 
"You'll be sore," the Italian rejoined, and slapped his thigh. "Why not stop here and get good job?"
 
But Peter and I were not looking for a job just then, and we went on. I was glad the Bulgarian was not tempted, for I relished his company, and he was pleasantly loquacious.
 
"Do you like the Americans?" I asked him.
 
He raised his eyebrows. Evidently he did not like them very much.
 
[Pg 193]
 
"Half-civilise," said he. "When I say my boss, 'I go,' he want me fight. He offens me. I say, 'You Americans—bulldogs, no more, half-civilise.' And I go all the same and no fight great big fat American."
 
"You think Bulgaria a better country?"
 
"'S a poor country, that's all. There's more life in Europe. Americans don't know what they live for."
 
I looked with some astonishment on this day-labourer in shabby attire talking thus intelligently, and withal so frankly.
 
He told me he hated the English. They had said, anent the Balkan War, "The fruits must not be taken from the victors"; but when Montenegro took Scutari they were the first to say to King Nicholas "Go back, go back." He thought I was a Slav immigrant like himself, or he would not have struck up acquaintance with me. But he seemed relieved when I told him my sympathies were entirely with the Slavs.
 
We talked of Russian literature, and of Tolstoy in particular.
 
"Tolstoy understood about God," said he. "He said God is within you, not far away or everywhere, but in yourself. By that I understand life. All life springs from inside. What comes from outside is nahthing. That is how Americans live—in outside things, going to shows, baseball matches.... I know Shakespeare was the mirror of life, that's not[Pg 194] what I mean.... To be educated mentally is light and life; to be developed only physically is death and.... That's why I say bulldogs, not civilise. When I was in Philadelphia I hear a Socialist in the Park and he asked, 'How d'ye fellows live?—eat—work, eat—work—drink, eat—work—sleep, eat—work—sleep. Machines, that's what y'are.'"
 
The most astonishing evidence of thought and culture that Peter Deemeff gave me was contained in a reflection he made half-aloud, in a pause in the conversation—"A great writer once said, 'If God had not existed, man would have invented his God'—that is a good idea, eh?" Fancy that from the lips of an unskilled labourer! These foreign working-men are bringing something new to America. If they only settle down to be American citizens and look after their children's education!
 
"Do many Bulgarians think?" I asked him.
 
"Yes, many—they think more than I do."
 
We spent the night under great rocks; he under one, I under another. My bed, which I made soft with last year's bracken, was under three immense boulders, a natural shelter, a deep dark cavern with an opening that looked across the river-gorge to the forested cliff on the other side. The Bulgarian, less careful about his comfort, lay in a ferny hollow, just sheltered by an overhanging stone. Before lying down he commended himself to God, and crossed[Pg 195] himself very delicately and trustfully. With all his philosophy he had not cast off the habits of the homeland. And almost directly he laid himself down he fell asleep.
 
It was a wonderful night. As I lay in my cave and the first star was looking down at me from over the great wooded cliff, what was my astonishment to see a living spark go past the entrance of the cave, a flame on wings—the firefly. I lay and watched the forest lose its trees, and the cliff become one great black wall, ragged all along the crest. Mists crept up and hid the wall for a while, and then passed. An hour and a half after I had lain down, and the Bulgarian had fallen asleep, I opened my eyes and looked out at the black wall—little lamps were momentarily appearing and disappearing far away in the mysterious dark depths of the cliff. It seemed to me that if when we die we perish utterly, then that living flame moving past my door was something like the passing of man's life. It was strange to lie on the plucked rustling bracken, and have the consciousness of the cold sepulchre-like roof of the cave, and look out at the figure of man's life. But the river chorus lulled me to sleep. Whenever I reawakened and looked out I saw the little lights once more, appearing and vanishing, like minutest sprites searching the forest with lanterns.
 
Peter and I woke almost at the same time in the[Pg 196] morning in a dense mist. I sent him for water, and I collected wood for a fire. We made tea, took in warmth, and then set off once more.
 
"Let us go to a farmhouse and get some breakfast," said I.
 
"We get it most likely for nothing, because it's Sunday," said Peter with a smile.
 
The Americans are much more hospitable on Sundays than on week days. They do not, however, like to see you tramping the road on the day of rest; it is thought to be an infraction of the Sabbath—though it is difficult to see what tramps can do but tramp on a Sunday.
 
We had a splendid breakfast for ten cents apiece at a stock-breeding farm below Luthersburg,—pork and beans, bread and butter and cookies, strawberry jam and home-canned plums, pear-jelly. I thanked the lady of the establishment when we had finished, and remarked that I thought it very cheap at the price. She answered that she didn't serve out lunches for a profit, but wouldn't let decent men pass hungry.
 
"Are you hiking to the next burg?" she asked.
 
"Chicago," said I.
 
"Gee!"
 
We came to Luthersburg, high up on the crest of the hills, a large village, with two severe-looking churches.
 
"When I see these narrow spires I'm afraid," said[Pg 197] the Bulgarian. "I should have to wither my soul and make it small to get into one of these churches. I like a church with walls of praise and a spire of yearning,—Tolstoy, eh? That spire says to me 'I feared Thee, O God, because Thou art an austere man.'"
 
I, for my part, thought it strange that Americans, taking so many risks in business, and daring and imagining so large-heartedly in the secular world, should be satisfied with so cramped an expression of their religion.
 
Peter and I went down on the other side of the hills to Helvetia, the first town in a wild coaling district, a place of many Austrians, Poles, and Huns. It was the Sunday evening promenade, and every one was out of doors, hundreds of miners and labourers in straight-creased trousers (how soon obtained) and cheap felt hats, a similar number of dark, interesting-looking Polish girls in their gaudy Sunday best. We passed a hundred yards of grey coke-ovens glowing at all their doors and emitting hundreds of fires and flames. Peter seemed unusually attracted by the coke-ovens or by the Slav population, and he decided to remain at Helvetia and seek for a job on the morrow. So I accompanied him into a "boarding-house," and was ready to spend the night with him. But when I saw the accommodation of coaly beds I cried off. So the Bulgarian and I parted. I went on to Sykesville[Pg 198] and the Hotel Sykes. Obviously I was in America,—fancy calling a hotel in England "Hotel Sykes." But I did not stay there, preferring to hasten up country and get a long step beyond black breaker-towers, the sooty inclines up which tru............