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Read Ebook: The Memoirs of an American Citizen by Herrick Robert Masters F B Frank B Illustrator
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Ebook has 1934 lines and 86740 words, and 39 pages
PAGE
"Feeling that I had come to the end of things in Chicago mighty quick" 12
"I believe she would have let me kiss her had I wanted to then" 24
"Earning mighty little but my keep" 25
"'I guess she don't want much to see you'" 30
"'I want you to take this'" 34
"'Ma Pierson's'" 38
"The Enterprise Market" 44
"'That's Strauss!'" 49
"'Do you hear?' the Irishman roared" 58
"My part was to drive a wagon for Dround at fifteen a week" 59
"'What do you know about sausage?' he asked" 65
"'All right,' he called out, 'we'll take his deal'" 71
"His long arms twitched with horror" 78
"'My! I tell you I'll be glad to get home to-night'" 94
"Big John was one of the first to welcome me back" 96
"The door of the inner office was pulled back and Strauss himself walked into the room" 102
"'Why, of course, you are the Mr. Harrington who--But you have changed!'" 106
"She was reading me like a book of large print" 116
"'I have been offering your young man some advice, Sarah'" 119
"I could see that they would come together very soon" 126
"'You aren't much troubled with scruples, Van!'" 137
"'I paid the right people ninety-five hundred dollars. Now what are you going to do about it?'" 142
"'Young feller, do you reckon you can buck up against me and the Strauss crowd with that one-horse rig?'" 153
"'I think you could put up the right kind of a fight,' she remarked quietly" 160
"That comedy took place on the court-house steps according to law" 172
"I pointed out the great currents of world trade" 181
"The black rocks starting right out of the water" 189
"'When the time comes that you want help, when you cannot go on alone--'" 194
"He undertook to give me a lesson then and there on the rights of the anarchist" 208
"'You have done something the taste of which will never get out of your mouth'" 223
"'When a man comes out of the alley and puts a pistol in your face, and asks for all the money you have on you, you don't wait to see where you hit him, do you?'" 228
"'Only this,' I said slowly, 'I don't sell out to you'" 234
"'Couldn't you find any one else to do your dirty work but your own brother?'" 242
"Somehow years had gone by in that evening" 249
"'No, child, you are wrong! There is no truth in your cruel words'" 259
"To-day I should like to slip back once more to the bum that landed in Chicago--unattached, unburdened, unbound" 271
"It was a messenger boy with a delayed telegram" 275
"'For this is the last ditch, sure enough!'" 278
"'If you grasp them in a strong hand, they will become diamonds'" 284
"'There isn't enough money coined to bring me to him'" 292
"'And we are the crowd that's got the combination to the safe'" 312
"Men paused to read the bulletin, and I stopped, too" 321
"'He's the man who sold scraps and offal to the Government for canned beef--'" 322
"'So you see there is nothing, Van, that you can give me that I should want to take'" 333
"'Do you remember how I used to wash while you wiped, when we wanted to get out buggy-riding, May?'" 341
THE LAKE FRONT IN CHICAGO
It was a raw, blustering September night when I rounded up for the first time at the lake front in Chicago. There was just a strip of waste land, in those days, between the great avenue and the railroad tracks that skirted the lake. In 1876 there were no large hotels or skyscrapers fronting a tidy park; nothing but some wooden or brick houses, and, across the tracks, the waves lapped away at the railroad embankment. I was something more than twenty, old enough, at any rate, to have earned a better bed than a few feet of sand and sooty grass in a vacant lot. It was the first night I had ever slept out,--at least, because there was no place I had a right to go to. All that day I had been on the tramp from Indiana, and reached the city with only a few cents in my pockets.
I was not the only homeless wanderer by any means. Early in the evening a lot of bums began to drop in, slinking down the avenue or coming over from the city through the cross streets. It was early in the season; but to-night the east wind raked the park and shook gusts of rain from the low clouds, making it comfortable to keep moving. So we wandered up and down that sandy strip, footing it like dogs on the hunt for a hole, and eying each other gloomily when we passed.
Early in the evening a big wooden building at the north end was lighted up, and some of us gathered around the windows and hung there under the eaves watching the carriages drive up to the door to leave their freight. There was a concert in the hall, and after it began I crawled up into the arch of a window where I was out of the rain and could hear the music. Before the concert was over a watchman caught sight of me and snaked me to the ground. He was making a round of the building, stirring up the bums who had found any hole out of the reach of the wind. So we began once more that dreary, purposeless tramp to keep from freezing.
"Kind of chilly!" a young fellow called out to me.
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