o, he was to get
no cash.

The boat reached Chicago in ten days. It was a great trip--full of mild
adventure and lots of things that would have surprised the folks at
Rockford. Jim got a job on the docks as checker-off, or understudy to a
freight-clerk. The pay was a dollar a day. He now sent his original
twenty dollars back to his mother to prove to her that he was prosperous
and money was but a bagatelle and a burden. A month, and he had joined
the ever-moving westward tide. He was headed for California, the land of
shining nuggets and rainbow hopes. He reached Rock Island, and saw a
sign out at a sawmill, "Men Wanted." He knew the business and was given
work on sight. In a week his mathematics came in handy and he was
handed a lumber-rule and a blank-book.

Mr. Hill yet recalls his first sight of a Mississippi River steamboat
coming into Davenport. The tall smokestacks belching fire, the graceful,
swanlike motion, the marvelous beauty of the superstructure, the
wonderful letter "D" in gold, or something that looked like gold, swung
between the stacks! It was just dusk, and as the boat glided in toward
the shore, a big torch was set ablaze, the gang-plank was run out to the
weird song of the colored deckhands, and miracle and fairyland arrived.
For a month whenever a steamboat blew its siren whistle, Jim was on the
wharf, open-mouthed, gaping, wondering, admiring. One day he could stand
it no longer. He threw up his job and took passage on the sailing
palace, "Molly Devine," for Dubuque. Here he changed boats, and boarded
a smaller vessel, a stern-wheeler, deck passage for Saint Paul, a point
which seemed to the young man somewhere near the North Pole.

He was going to get his fill of steamboat-riding for once at least. It
was his intention to remain at Saint Paul a couple of days, see Saint
Anthony's Falls and Minnehaha, and then take the same boat back down the
river. But something happened that induced him to change his plans.

* * * * *

The two days on the steamboat had wearied Jim. The prenatal Scotch idea
of industry was upon him, and conscience had begun to squirm. He applied
for work as soon as he walked out on the levee. The place was the office
of the steamboat company. He stated in an offhand way that he had had
experience on the water-front in Chicago, Rock Island and Davenport.

He was hired on the spot as shipping-clerk with the gratuitous remark,
"If you haven't sen