great celebration of the
commencement of work on the first railway in the province was in
progress. When things are undecided, small matters turn the scale.
The choice of my day for starting out on my adventurous journey was
partly fixed by the desire to reach St. John and see something of
the celebration. Darkness came on when I was yet a mile or two from
the city; then the first rocket I had ever beheld rose before me in
the sky. Two of what seemed like unfortunate incidents at the time
were most fortunate. Subsequent and disappointing experience showed
that had I succeeded in getting the ride I wished in the stage,
the resulting depletion of my purse would have been almost fatal
to my reaching my journey's end. Arriving at the city, I naturally
found all the hotels filled. At length a kindly landlady said that,
although she had no bed to give me, I was quite welcome to lie on a
soft carpeted floor, in the midst of people who could not find any
other sleeping place. No charge was made for this accommodation.
My hope of finding something to do which would enable me to earn
a little money in St. John over and above the cost of a bed and a
daily loaf of bread was disappointed. The efforts of the next week
are so painful to recall that I will not harrow the feelings of the
reader by describing them. Suffice it to say that the adventure was
wound up by an interview at Calais, a town on the Maine border, a
few miles from Eastport, with the captain of a small sailing vessel,
hardly more than a boat. He was bound for Salem. I asked him the
price of a passage.

"How much money have you?" he replied.

I told him; whether it was one or two dollars I do not recall.

"I will take you for that if you will help us on the voyage."

The offer was gladly accepted. The little craft was about as near the
opposite of a clipper ship as one can imagine, never intended to run
in any but fair winds, and even with that her progress was very slow.
There was a constant succession of west winds, and the result was that
we were about three weeks reaching Salem. Here I met my father, who,
after the death of my mother, had come to seek his fortune in the
"States." He had reached the conclusion, on what grounds I do not
know, that the eastern part of Maryland was a most desirable region,
both in the character of its people and in the advantages which it
offered us. The result was that, at the beginning of 1854, I found
myself teac