and stabbed him like a knife. He sat perfectly
motionless, silent, but gripping his hands tightly,
while a storm gathered in his bosom and a flood heaped
itself up behind his eyes. And in the end he could
bear it no more, but buried his face in his hands
and burst into tears, to the alarm and amazement of
his hosts. Between the shame of this and his
woe Jurgis could not stand it, and got up and rushed
out into the rain.
He went on and on down the road, finally coming to
a black woods, where he hid and wept as if his heart
would break. Ah, what agony was that, what despair,
when the tomb of memory was rent open and the ghosts
of his old life came forth to scourge him! What
terror to see what he had been and now could never
be—to see Ona and his child and his own
dead self stretching out their arms to him, calling
to him across a bottomless abyss—and to
know that they were gone from him forever, and he writhing
and suffocating in the mire of his own vileness!
Chapter 23
Early in the fall Jurgis set out for Chicago again.
All the joy went out of tramping as soon as a man
could not keep warm in the hay; and, like many thousands
of others, he deluded himself with the hope that by
coming early he could avoid the rush. He brought
fifteen dollars with him, hidden away in one of his
shoes, a sum which had been saved from the saloon-keepers,
not so much by his conscience, as by the fear which
filled him at the thought of being out of work in the
city in the winter time.
He traveled upon the railroad with several other men,
hiding in freight cars at night, and liable to be
thrown off at any time, regardless of the speed of
the train. When he reached the city he left the
rest, for he had money and they did not, and he meant
to save himself in this fight. He would bring
to it all the skill that practice had brought him,
and he would stand, whoever fell. On fair nights
he would sleep in the park or on a truck or an empty
barrel or box, and when it was rainy or cold he would
stow himself upon a shelf in a ten-cent lodginghouse,
or pay three cents for the privileges of a “squatter”
in a tenement hallway. He would eat at free lunches,
five cents a meal, and never a cent more—so
he might keep alive for two months and more, and in
that time he would surely find a job. He would
have to bid farewell to his summer cleanliness, of
course, for he would come out of the first night’s
lodging with his clothes alive with vermin. There
was no place in the city where he could wash even
his face, unless he went down to the lake front—and
there it would soon be all ice.
First he went to the steel mill and the harvester
works, and found that his places there had been filled
long ago. He was careful to keep away from the
stockyards—he was a single man now, he told
himself, and he meant to stay one, to have his wages
for his own when he got a job. He began the long,
weary round of factories and warehouses, tramping all
day, from one end of the city to the other, finding
everywhere from ten to a hundred men ahead of him.
He watched the newspapers, too—but no longer
was he to be taken in by smooth-spoken agents.
He had been told of all those tricks while “on
the road.”
