Cleveland exemplifies the characteristics of contemporary America, and points to the future. It has its horde of foreign mercenaries living by alien ethics, and committing every now and then atrocious crimes which shock the American community. But it is a "cleaned-up" town. All the dens of the city have been raided; there is no gambling, little drunkenness and immorality. On my first night in the town I had my supper in a saloon, and as I sat among the beer-drinking couples I listened to an old man who was haranguing us all on the temptations of women and drink. The saloon-keeper had no power to turn him out, and possibly had not even the wish to do so. The passion for cleaning up America overtakes upon occasion even those whose living depends upon America remaining "unclean."  
Cleveland is well built, and has fine avenues and broad streets. It is well kept, and in the drawing-room of the town you'd never suspect what was going on in the back kitchen and the yard. But take a turn about and you see that the city is not merely[Pg 226] one of good clothes, white buildings, and upholstery; there are vistas of smoke and sun, bridges and cranes, endless railway tracks and steaming engines. They are working in the background, the Slavs and the Italians and the Hungarians, the Kikes and the Wops and the Hunkies. There is a rumour of Chicago in the air; you can feel the pulse of the hustling West.
 
Perhaps nothing is more promising than the twelve miles of garden suburb that go westward from the city along Erie Shore. Tchekof, working in his rose-garden in the Crimea, used to say, "I believe that in quite a short time the whole world will be a garden." This growth of Cleveland gives just that promise to the casual observer. How well these middle-class Americans live? Without the advertisement of the fact they have finer arrangements of streets and houses than we have at Golders Green and Letchworth. Nature is kind. There is a grand freshness and a steeping radiance. The people know how to live out-of-doors, and the women are public all day. No railings, fences, bushes, just sweet lawn approaches, verandahs, on the lawns sprinklers and automatic fountains scattering water to the sparrows' delight. The iris is out and the honeysuckle is in bloom.
 
THE LITHUANIAN WHO SAT BEHIND THE ASPHALT AND COAL-OIL SCATTERER
THE LITHUANIAN WHO SAT BEHIND THE ASPHALT AND COAL-OIL SCATTERER.
 
I prefer, however, to walk in the sight of wooded hills or great waters, and as soon as I could find a way to the back of the long series of suburban villas I went to the sandbanks of the shore and into the[Pg 227] company of the great lake. It was just sunset time, and the sun of fire was changing to a sun of blood and sinking into the waters. There was a great suffusion of crimson in the western sky and a reflection of it in the green and placid lake. But the water in the foreground was grey, and it rippled past silver reeds. I stood and listened; the great silence of the vast lake on the one hand and the whizz of automobiles on the other, the paup-paup of electric-tram signals, the great whoop of the oncoming freight trains on the Lake-Shore railway. Far out on the water there were black dashes on the lit surface and little smokes proceeding from them—steamers. The lake became lucent yellow with blackness in the West and mystery in the East. A steamer in the East seemed fixed as if caught in a spell. Then the blackness of the West came like an intense dye and poured itself into the rest of the sky. The East became still—indigo, very precious and holy, the colour of incense smoke.
 
I tramped by Clifton through the deep dust of a motor-beaten road towards Lorain. It was night before I found a suitable place for sleeping, for most of the ground was private, and there were many people about. At last I found a deserted plot, where building operations had evidently been taking place during the day, but from which the workmen had gone. There were, however, many tools and covetable properties lying about, and I had hardly settled down[Pg 228] before I heard the baying of dogs on a chain. About half-past eleven Fedka the watchman came along, singing a Russian song to himself, and he lighted a large lantern, unloosed two dogs, then went into a shed, lay down and went to sleep—a nice watchman! My only consideration was the dogs, a bull-dog and a collie, but they didn't know of my presence. They had expeditions after tramps on the road, after waggons, automobiles, tramcars, trains, but never once sniffed at the stranger sleeping under their noses. However, at about three in the morning the bull-dog spotted me, and no doubt had rather a queer turn. He actually tripped on me as he was prowling about, and my heart stood still. He eyed me, growled low, sniffed at my knees, snorted. "He will spring at my throat in a moment," I thought; "I'll defend myself with that big saw lying so handy beside me!" But no, wonder of wonders! the dog did not attack me, but just lay calmly down beside me and was my gaoler. He dozed and breathed heavily, but every now and then opened one eye and snarled; evidently he took his duties seriously. I forgot him and slept. But I had the consciousness that in the morning I had to get away somehow.
 
But about half an hour before dawn some one drove a score of cows down the road, causing the collie to go mad—so mad that the bull-dog bestirred himself and followed superciliously, not sure whether[Pg 229] he were needed or not. Then I swiftly put my things together and decamped—and got away.
 
I watched the dawn come up out of a rosy mist over Erie. The lake was vast and placid and mud-coloured, but there were vague purple shadows in it. I learned that mud was the real colour at this point, and there was no clear sparkling water to bathe in, but only a sea stirred up.
 
Down by the shore, just after my dip, I caught a young aureole with red breast and mouth so yellow, and I tried to feed him with sugar and butter; but he was very angry, and from many trees and low bushes round about came the scolding and calling of the parents, who had been rashly giving their progeny his first run.
 
I tramped to the long settlement of Lorain with its store-factory and many Polish workers, but continued to the place called Vermilion, walking along the grey-black sands of the shore. I came to Crystal Beach. It was a perfect day, the zenith too radiant to look at, the western sky ahead of the road a rising smoke of sapphire, but filled with ineffable sunshine. It was difficult to look otherways but downward, and I needed all the brim of my hat to protect my neck and my eyes. The lake was now blue-grey as the sea, but still not very tempting, though Crystal Beach is a great holiday resort. It seemed to me more than a lake and yet less than a sea—the water had no other shore and[Pg 230] yet suggested no infinity. The visitor, however, considered it beautiful. That was clear from the enthusiastic naming of the villas and resorts on the shore. Again, it was strange to pass from the workshop of America to the parlour,—from industrial Lorain to ease-loving Vermilion, and to exchange the vision of unwashed immigrants in slouch hats for dainty girls all in white and smart young men in delicate linen.
 
I went into the general store and bought butter and sugar and tea, and then to the baker for a loaf of bread and a peach pie. What a delicacy is an eight-penny peach pie when you know you are going to sit on a bank and munch it, drink coffee, and watch your own wood-blaze.
 
On my way to Sandusky I got several offers of jobs. A road surveyor and his man, trundling and springing along the road in their car, nearly ran me down, and as a compensation for my experience of danger stopped and gave me a lift, offering also to give me work if I wanted it. All the highway from Cleveland to Toledo was to be macadamised by next summer; thousands of men were wanted all along the line, and I could get to work that very afternoon "farming ditches on each side of the road" if I wished.
 
I jigged along three miles in the automobile and then stepped down to make my dinner. Whilst I was lighting my fire a Bohemian came and had a little chat with me.
 
[Pg 231]
 
"How far ye going?"
 
"Chicago."
 
"You should get on a freight train. I come up from New York myself on a freighter and dropped off here two days ago. It's too far to walk; you carry heavy things. Besides, there's a good job here mending the road. I've just been taken on. A mile up the road you'll see a waggon; ask there, they're making up a gang. The work's a bit rough but the pay good."
 
Then I came on a gang of Wops and Huns loading bridge-props and ribbons and guard-rails on to an electric trolley, and the boss again applied to me.
 
"No, thanks!"
 
A man with an asphalt and coal-oil scatterer came past. His was a dirty job. He sat behind a boiler-shaped cistern, which another man was dragging along with a petrol engine. It had a rose like a watering-cart, but instead of water there flowed this dark mixture of asphalt and oil. The man, a Lithuanian, was sitting on the rose, his legs were dangling under it, and it was his task to keep his finger on the tap and regulate the flow of the fast-trickling mixture. Though a Lithuanian by birth he spoke a fair English, and explained that the asphalt and oil laid the dust for the whole summer, and solidified the surface of the road, so that automobiles could go pleasantly along. There was another machine waiting behind, and they had[Pg 232] not men to work it. If I liked to report myself at the depot I could get a job, it was quite simple, not hard work, and the pay was good. He got two dollars a day.
 
Then, as I was going through a little town, a Norwegian came running out of a shop and pulled me in, saying, "You're a professional, no doubt, stay here and take photographs"; and he showed me his screens and classical backgrounds. It was interesting to consider the many occasions on which I might have given up Europe and started as a young man in America, entering life afresh, and starting a new series of connections and acquaintances. But I had only come as a make-believe colonist.
 
As the weather was very hot I took a wayside seat erected by a firm of clothiers to advertise their wares, and it somewhat amused me to think that as I sat in my somewhat ragged and dust-stained attire the seat seemed to say I bought my suit at Clayton's. As I sat there six Boy Scouts came tramping past, walking home from their camping-ground, boys of twelve or thirteen, all carrying saucepans and kettles, one of them a bag of medical appliances and medicines, all with heavy blankets—sun-browned, happy little bodies.
 
There is all manner of interest on the road. The gleaming, red-headed woodpecker that I watch alights on the side of the telegraph-pole, looks at the wood as[Pg 233] at a mirror, and then, to my mild surprise, goes right into the pole. There must be a hole there and a nest. I hear the guzzling of the little woodpeckers within. Upon reflection, I remember that the mother's beak was disparted, and there was something between. Rather amusing, a woodpecker living in a telegraph-pole—Nature taking advantage of civilisation!
 
Then there are many squirrels in the woods by the road, and they wag their tails when they squeak.
 
At tea-time, by the lake shore, a beautiful white-breasted but speckled snipe tripped around the sand, showing me his round head, plump body, and dainty legs. He had his worms and water, I my bread and tea; we were equals in a way.
 
Then after tea I caught a little blind mouse, no bigger than my thumb, held him in my hand, and put him in his probable hole.
 
As I rested by a railway arch Johnny Kishman, a fat German boy, got off his bicycle to find out what manner of man I was. His chief interest was to find out how much money I made by walking. And I flabbergasted him.
 
I came into Huron by a road of coal-dust, and left the beautiful countryside once more for another industrial inferno. Here were many cranes, black iron bridges, evil smells, an odorous, green river. There was a continuous noise as of three rolls of thunder in one from the machinery of the port. I stopped[Pg 234] a party of Slavs, who were strolling out of the town to the strains of an accordion, and asked them by what the noise was made. I was informed it was the lading of Pennsylvanian coal and the unlading of Wisconsin and Canadian ore, the tipping of five to ten tons at a time into the holds of coal boats or into trucks of freight trains.
 
I went into a restaurant in the dreary town, and there, over an ice-cream, chatted with an American, who hoped I would lick Jack London and Gibson and the rest of them "to a frazzle." A girl, who came into the shop, told me that last year she wanted to walk to Chicago and sleep out, but could not get a companion—a chance for me to step in. Mine host was one of these waggish commercial men in whom America abounds, and he had posted above his bar:
 
ELEVEN MEN WHO ASKED
CREDIT
LIE DEAD IN MY CELLAR
 
But he made good ice-cream.
 
Every one combined to boost the town and advise me to see this and that. The port machinery and lading operations were the wonder of Erie Shore, and provided work for a great number of Hungarians, Italians, and Slavs. Not so many years back there was no such machinery here, and the work was done with buckets and derricks.
 
JOHNNY KISHMAN, A GERMAN BOY, GOT OFF HIS BICYCLE
"JOHNNY KISHMAN, A GERMAN BOY, GOT OFF HIS BICYCLE TO FIND OUT WHAT MANNER OF MAN I WAS."
 
[Pg 235]
 
I forebore to have supper at the creditless inn, but as I walked out of the dark town I spied a fire burning on a bit of waste land, and there I boiled my kettle and made coffe............