One Way Out

RATE TO

head who was a sort of man-of-all-work for the neighborhood. He took care of my furnace and fussed about

n, "but I've got a bill co

ad in my pocket just ten cents over my carfare. But wh

me that you're p

rint, sor, i

would bring me in food. My people had lived in this country some two hundred years or more, and Murphy had prob

e you, Murp

on sixt

to Ameri

broke,

a wife and

and six

of it! An

en in s

e that here at least I w

em in coll

Well he might. But to

left over to put up a

the bank," Murphy

t an old man y

d,

--" But I guess I talked a bit wild. I don't know what I sai

you shall have the money within a week

he gasped.

solution now

thirty years ago." I left him staring at me. I

frown. She didn't hear me come in, but when I touched her arm she jumped up, ashamed to think

she cried, "i

t-if you appro

e answered, witho

d or France or Germany and found life as hard as this and some

ate, Billy," she

ly. Wh

Amer

one out of a thousand if we d

who comes here from somew

ne big gamble to them. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose. It's the same spirit that drives young New Englanders out west to try their luck, to pre?mpt homesteads in the Northwest, to till the prairies. Another reason is that they come over here free-unbound by conventions. They can work as they pl

reath. She cut

re going

s we can pay our debts and have a few dollars over, but that w

then,

year and landing them right on those docks. These people have had to cross the ocean to reach that point, but

t make out

e 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 fe

ace more beautiful. It was flushed and eage

wonderful

when a husband's chief function was just that-being a man to his own good woman. We looked f

of the

he 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 wasn't sure but that it was better for him to learn at

"I'm not worry

ept so fresh,"

h things that keep

e, Billy,"

with new inspiration answered me using ag

ear for my

position, how I had tried for another, how at length I had resolved to go pioneering just as his great-grandfather had done

n kitchen table, a half dozen chairs, the cot bed in the boy's room, the iron bed in our room, the long mirror I gave Ruth on her birthday, and a sort of china closet that stood in the dining-room. To this we added bowls, pitchers, and lamps. All the rest, which included a full dining-room set, a full dinner set of china, the furnishings of the front room, including books and book case, chairs, rugs, pictures and two or three good chairs, a full bed-room set in our room and a cheaper one in the boy's room, piazza furnishings, garden tools,

of the city and my flat consisted of four rooms. The rent was three dollars a week. Murphy looked surprised

"and they wouldn't beli

man with my late associates they certainly looked like an inferior lot. I studied them with curiosity; there must be more in them than showed on the surface to bring them over here-there must be something that wasn't in the rest of us for them to make good the way they did. In the next six months I meant to find out what that was. In the meantime just sitting there among them I felt as though I had more elbow room than I had had since I was eighteen. Before me as before them a co

new enthusiasm I wanted to ask him why he didn't come out and get in line the other side of the window. He yawned as he wrote down my name. I didn't have to

," he a

. He looked me over at this. I d

d a half-n

ht," I a

d started on with the United; it was over a third of what I had been getting after my first ten years of hard work with them. It seemed too good to be true. Taking o

of my digging in a ditch a bit hard, but that was only be

would have to do if we took a homestead out wes

m. Then she smiled. It was the la

and Ruth was hard pressed to keep our secret. I sat upstairs and chuckled as I heard her replies. She s

f you," said little Mrs. Grove

," answered Ruth,

ou goi

a long, l

n't have gone farther out of their

very much surprised and very much grieved and very curious. To all their inquiries

rance company, "but I wish I had the nerv

west first,

e station was

out in that country," he said. "

t," I answered, "but th

reason with my job; with having inherited a fortune, with having gambled in the market, with, thrown in for good measure, a darker hint about having misappropriated funds of the United Woollen. But somehow their nastiest gossip did not disturb me. It had