Jack London
Boston Evening Transcript/May 26, 1900
Reminiscence by the Author of the “Son of the Wolf”
How He Came Here in a Freight Car in 1894 and Saw the Sights of the Town—He Loses the Common, but Finds Copp’s Hill
How did I arrive In Boston? Let me see. It was in 1894, the year after the World’s Fair, and somewhere along in the fall. Ah! how It comes back! I bid good-by to the City Hall park and the Bowery and left Harlem on a freight train which pulled out in two sections—the Old Colony railroad, I think; no, I don’t remember, but anyway it ran to Boston.
It was a Sunday afternoon, biasing with sunshine, so I had the pleasure of being thrown off the first and second sections by the shacks. I beg pardon, “shack” is the vernacular for “brakeman.” But in the third section was a “gondola” (flat car), loaded with huge iron pipes. Into one of these I curled up and read the New York Sunday papers, and, as the light waned, dozed off and regained the sleep lost the previous night in the company of a pessimistic printer out of a job.
Somewhere about midnight the train made a long stop in the railroad yards of some big city, and I crawled out long enough to borrow some tobacco from a sleepy wheel-tapper. What city it was I do not know. And for that matter, I do not know what part of the country I traversed during the trip—in all likelihood Connecticut and Rhode Island, but I have never taken the trouble to look It up on the map. Suffice to say, having mulcted the aforesaid wheel-tapper of half a sack of flake cut (excellent for cigarettes), I caught my gondola and went to bed again.
The freight was leisurely pulling out of some small stop when the next day broke, cold and gray, and found a “shack” ill-manneredly hammering upon my iron pipe and inviting me in no uncertain tone to “hit the grit.” In other words, I was in imminent danger of being forcibly ejected from a moving train. Such things are not pleasant; so I bandied words with the man, criticized his general make-up, and dissertated upon the vascular action of the heart and the physiological cataclysms caused by intemperate anger. I also commented upon his ancestry and blackened his genealogical tree. As behooved a tramp of parts, my mastery of intensive adjectives and vituperative English was such as invariably to move men in my direction. This was what I desired, and the man proceeded to do by crawling in after me. On the outside he controlled both exits (a pipe having two ends), but once inside he surrendered this tactical advantage. So I withdrew by the opposite end, hastily, and hit the grit on my own feet, which is a nicer way to alight, when all things are taken into consideration. If that “shack” should cast his eyes upon this, let him rest assured that I bore no malice—nay, not even when I made his soul bitter with hypothetical epithets concerning the ways of his progenitors.
However, I found the town in which I had alighted to be Attleboro, a place where the inhabitants solved the scheme of life by manufacturing jewelry. As a traveler and a student of economics and sociology, it was perhaps my duty to visit those establishments, but I preferred going round to the back doors of the more imposing residences. After breakfasting with a pretty matron and charming, to whom I had never been introduced and with whom I failed to leave my card, I returned to the depot, where I knew east-bound trains ran to Boston. It was ruining, and I sought shelter on the covered platform and rolled a cigarette. This action, being essentially Californian, at once aroused attention, and forthwith I was surrounded by a group of curious idlers, anxious to see the performance repeated. This was in 1894, so I suppose they have in the interim grown sufficiently degenerate to roll their own cigarettes. Nevertheless, I often wonder if any of them recollect the lad with the gray suit and cloth cap, smooth-faced and badly sunburned, who taught them how to do the trick.
I missed a train while out rustling dinner, then fell asleep in the waiting-room that evening and missed another, so that it was nearly midnight before I caught an east-bound freight and rode the decks (roofs) into the Hub. Now I must be treated leniently if it chanced that I saw but the surface of Boston. Remember, I was devoid of letters of credit or introduction, while my only entree was the police station. Entertaining peculiar tenets regarding cleanliness, it is not to be wondered that I avoided this place and sought a park bench Instead. I wandered hit or miss till I came to the Common. And I knew it was the Common as soon as I put my eye upon it—why? I do not know. It must have been an inspiration.
Brrr! It’s a raw old wind that blows in Boston, about 2 A. M., especially along in September. I shivered and shook, collar pulled up and cap down, vainly trying to sleep, till a policeman tapped me. Now, gentle reader, a word of warning should you ever go on the “road”: Always placate the policeman. He is at once the dispenser and obfuscator of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He shapes the destinies of lesser creatures, and free air or dungeon lurk in his gruff “Move on,” or “Come on.” Placate him by all means when your trails cross, and one way to do this is to arouse his interest. This I endeavored to do in the present instance by simulating drowsiness and by mumbling unintelligibly:
“What?” he peremptorily demanded, and I answered, “Oh, never mind. I wasn’t awake yet, and I was dreaming about Ueno Park.”
“Where’s that?” he asked, and when I replied, “Japan,” I had him. And for two solid hours I led him up hill and down dale, in Yokohama and Tokio, on Fujiyama, through tea house and temple, bazaar and marketplace, till he forgot the municipality he served and the malefactors who feared him. At the end of that time he discovered that my teeth were chattering, said he was sorry he hadn’t any whiskey about him, gave me a silver quarter instead, and departed—he and his club.
Like Mowgli of undying fame, I had wandered through a thousand villages, and, like him, never had I been lost. But that was all in the golden days before I ventured on the cow paths of Boston. With the policeman’s silver quarter burning my hand, and in my eyes a vision of steaming coffee and juicy steak, I hastened forth in search of an all-night restaurant. This latter I found without difficulty, but not so the Common. For the rest of the night I wandered in quest of it, looking always for it to appear at the next crooked turning; but the powers had decreed that two days should elapse before I again clapped eyes on it.
Some time after daylight I found myself on the bridge which goes to Charlestown. As the breakfast hour approaches, men under similar circumstances to mine always point their toes in the direction of the residence districts. The street is a poor place for coppers in the early morning, while the belly-need Is a strenuous thing for a healthy man to carry around with him. On the bridge I overtook one of the fraternity. If by nothing else, I classified him by the look of his eye.
“You’re no gay cat,” he remarked with a comprehensive glance. “One of the pro-fesh, of course.”
I signified in the appropriate terms that such was my rating, and we unified our pace.
“New to the town, eh?” he asked. “I thought so. Came in last night? How’d you find floppings? Pretty crimpy, eh? Well, I know the old jerk like a book, and I’ll put you wise. Going to throw your feet for Java? I’ll put you on.”
And in this wise he manifested the good comradeship of the “Road.” Translated into common parlance, he had given me to understand that he divined I was a professional hobo, just arrived; that in my ignorance of the place I had got poor quarters and slept coldly; also that I was out in search of breakfast and that he would direct me to houses known as good. Yet this tramp, as I afterwards learned, was an erstwhile gentleman and college man, with more knowledge and culture under his rags than falls to the average man who sits in the high places.
As it was rather early, we sunned ourselves on the benches beside the Bunker Hill Monument, and, discovering an affinity of tastes and studies, discussed till breakfast time the possibilities of a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. After having satisfied the material man by “slamming gates” and “back-door collections,” we returned to the monument. Here we took the sunshine and talked Karl Marx and the German economists, until, in a sort of bashful way, he announced the possession of antiquarian propensities. Thereat I was haled across the bridge to the North End, where he resurrected all manner of architectural antiqultles and fairly bubbled with the his stories of the old buildings. How he ever acquired it—all the local knowledge and tradition puzzled me; for he was Southern born and had been In Boston but little over six weeks.
Two days I spent with this most entertaining person, putting much of our time into the North End, but wherever we happened to go, going with antiquities in prospect. Most of the relics are long since forgotten, but I shall never forget how lovingly and eloquently he dwelt upon the histories of such places as the Granary Burial Ground, the Old State House, the Old South Church and the house of Paul Revere. Needless to speak of my delight in all this, for I was fresh from the new and naked lands of the great West, where the elder inhabitants antedated history, and there was nothing old save the soil.
But I lost him one day, as men will lose comrades on the Road, and next picked up with a Dissolute Plumbers Apprentice of Celtic descent and cursed with the Curse of Reuben. He had read Arthur McEwen’s “San Francisco News Letter,” and my heart warmed to him. He was possessed of the more modern spirit, exulted in modernity in fact, and bent his efforts toward showing me the latest achievements and newest improvements. I remember he particularly dilated upon Boston’s park system, and took me to the public gymnasiums. And he it was who led my erring feet back to the Common. But I had one fault to find with him, and only one. He persisted In the belief that because I hailed from the West I could not take care of myself in a metropolis like Boston. His solicitude for me on a street crossing was side-bursting. Especially did he fear that I would be run down by that strange and terrible contrivance, the electric car.
But the best of friends must part. I had my eyes fixed upon Montreal and Ottawa, and winter was coming on. So the Dissolute Plumber’s Apprentice went down with me to the railroad yards, cursing the while his lack of soul for groat hazards and his instability of purpose which prevented him accompanying me. He gave me his address, and some day I would write to him, did I not feel certain that the exigencies of his status have long since forced him to change his abode a score of times.
As he gripped my hand for the last time, he said, feelingly, “Good-by, Jack, and say, old man, never will I forget the superb nonchalance with which you rolled a cigarette while an electric car nearly ripped you up the back.”
That night it turned very cold, so I forsook my tenets and slept in the police station at Lawrence.
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