ntions. They
can work as they please, live as they please. They haven't any caste
to hamper them. Another reason is that, being on the same great
adventure, they are all brothers. They pull together. Still another
reason is that as emigrants the whole United States stands ready to
help them with schools and playgrounds and hospitals and parks."

I paused for breath. She cut in excitedly:

"Then we're going out west?"

"No; we haven't the capital for that. By selling all our things we can
pay our debts and have a few dollars over, but that wouldn't take us
to Chicago. I'm not going ten miles from home."

"Where then, Billy?"

"You've seen the big ships come in along the water-front? They are
bringing over hundreds of emigrants every year and landing them right
on those docks. These people have had to cross the ocean to reach that
point, but our ancestors made the voyage for you and me two hundred
years ago. We're within ten miles of the wharf now."

She couldn't make out what I meant.

"Why, wife o' mine," I ran on, "all we need to do is to pack up, go
down to the dock and start from there. We must join the emigrants and
follow them into the city. These are the only people who are finding
America to-day. We must take up life among them; work as they work;
live as they live. Why, I feel my back muscles straining even now; I
feel the tingle of coming down the gangplank with our fortunes yet to
make in this land of opportunity. Pasquale has done it; Murphy has
done it. Don't you think I can do it?"

She looked up at me. I had never seen her face more beautiful. It was
flushed and eager. She clutched my arm. Then she whispered:

"My man--my wonderful, good man!"

The primitive appellation was in itself like a whiff of salt air. It
bore me back to the days when a husband's chief function was just
that--being a man to his own good woman. We looked for a moment into
each other's eyes. Then the same question was born to both of us in a
moment.

"What of the boy?"

It was a more serious question to her, I think, than it was to me. I
knew that the sons of other fathers and mothers had wrestled with that
life and come out strong. There were Murphy's boys, for instance. Of
course the life would be new to my boy, but the keen competition
ought to drive him to his best. His present life was not doing that.
As for the coarser details from which he had been so sheltered--well,
a man has to learn sooner or later, and I wa