* * * * *

With my recovery came news, after many days, of my father.

The Hunkies were pushing out the Irish from the mills—­cheaper labour.  My grandmother could not afford to board the Hunkies, they lived so cheaply.  Renewed poverty was breaking our household up.

My grandmother was about to begin her living about from house to house with her married sons and daughters.

My father was sending for me to come East.  He had a good job there in the Composite Works at Haberford.  He was at last able to take care of his son—­his only child.

* * * * *

My grandmother and my aunt Millie took me to the railroad station.  I tried to be brave and not cry.  I succeeded, till the train began to pull out.  Then I cried very much.

The face of my grandmother pulled awry with grief and flowing tears.  Aunt Millie wept, too.

No, I wouldn’t leave them.  I would stay with them, work till I was rich and prosperous, never marry, give all my life to taking care of them, to saving them from the bitter grinding poverty we had shared together.

I ran into the vestibule.  But the train was gathering speed so rapidly that I did not dare jump off.

I took my seat again.  Soon my tears dried.

The trees flapped by.  The telegraph poles danced off in irregular lines. 
I became acquainted with my fellow passengers.  I was happy.

I made romance out of every red and green lamp in the railroad yards we passed through, out of the dingy little restaurants in which I ate....

The mysterious swaying to and fro of the curtains in the sleeper thrilled me, as I looked out from my narrow berth.

In the smoker I listened till late to the talk of the drummers who clenched big black cigars between their teeth, or slender Pittsburgh stogies, expertly flicking off the grey ash with their little fingers, as they yarned.

I wore a tag on my coat lapel with my name and destination written on it.  My grandmother had put it there in a painful, scrawling hand.

* * * * *

The swing out over wide, salt-bitten marshes, the Jersey marshes grey and smoky before dawn!... then, far off, on the horizon line, New York, serrate, mountainous, going upward great and shining in the still dawn!

* * * * *

Beneath a high, vast, clamorous roof of glass....

As I stepped down to the platform my father met me.

I knew him instantly though it had been years since I had seen him.

* * * * *

My father whisked me once more across the long Jersey marshes.  To Haberford.  There, on the edge of the town, composed of a multitude of stone-built, separate, tin-roofed houses, stood the Composite Works.  My father was foreman of the drying department, in which the highly inflammable sheets of composite were hung to dry....