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THE ADVENTURES OF A

WOMAN HOBO

ONE

Table of Contents

April 18, 1908. Chicago, Illinois.

“Doctor Lynn, you are in the incipient stage of tuberculosis. You should return to California immediately.”

That is what Dr. Graves said to me to-day and he is in a position to know what he is talking about. But I can’t believe it! Why, I can do the work of two women. Haven’t I supported myself since I was fifteen years old, worked my way through Medical College and built up a city practice by my own, unaided efforts? Besides, every one says I am the picture of health. My five feet eight of energised muscle, my high colour, my breadth of shoulder, all seem to give such a diagnosis the lie.

Yet a still voice whispers in my heart, “It is true.” Since that last severe attack of grippe the buoyancy has vanished from my step. Life has become a drag.

But then, why not? The last two years have been strenuous. Just two years ago to-day San Francisco went down in earthquake and flames, scattering my growing practice to the winds. And of course Dan’s position went too. But we celebrated with an earthquake wedding, and it was not long until my husband had worked out his great invention, and we came here; he to gain financial backing for his project, and I to profit by the abundance of clinical material in a great city.

And then the panic of 1907 struck us. Why, the earthquake was nothing to that. Poor Dan was crushed. How can I tell him of this new calamity? And what will it profit to add to his burden, helpless as he is? For months now, he has walked the streets looking for any kind of employment at any wage, but none is to be had. This hopeless seeking, added to the stunning blow of the collapse of his company and the deadening pressure of debt incurred last fall when we borrowed to the utmost limit of all our friends’ capacity in a frantic endeavour to save the invention, only to lose money, company, invention—all in one universal crash—has completely unnerved him. To see his wife forced into the depths through his failure, even though that failure was no fault of his, has been gall and wormwood to him. Those days when we pledged every pawnable article in a dogged desire to hang on for just one week longer in the hope that the tide would turn; when we moved from lodgings to lodgings, each meaner and more squalid than the last, until the fathomless pit of hell itself seemed reached in this slum; when I gave up my work in the college where the wonderful experience gained was ample compensation except to those driven by grim necessity to seek for any work that would keep this vile tenement over our heads and put food in our mouths;—all these things have left him a broken-hearted man.

And there are many such. Months of idleness, a diet of bread and coffee, all the horrors of shivering nights in the open or in vermin-infested flop houses, the morning rush for the “help wanted” pages of the daily papers, the standing in line for hours waiting to apply for a job—a hundred men for a single position—would these things not take the heart, nay, the very soul itself, out of a man?

When I was discharged last month, losing my position because of a general retrenchment, never shall I forget the scenes at the Public Library when with scores of others I sought the protection of its sheltering walls at early morning to thaw the night’s coldness out of my half-frozen body, and search the papers for a possible chance of employment.

One young man in the huddled group interested me immensely. When the doors swung open, he bounded up the stairs like an athlete, well in the lead of the rushing horde who refused to wait for the elevator in their frenzied scramble for the first chance at a paper and possible employment. Well-dressed, palpably clean living and efficient, he was an excellent type of the successful young business man. I could picture him as a broker, in an insurance office or bank, or filling some responsible position in a business house. But in the fall of many such houses, his had evidently gone down to ruin and now the lad was beginning to feel the pinch that comes from weeks of idleness.

Morning after morning he appeared. His well-tailored suit gave way to a misfit piece of shoddy; his hat was replaced by a cap which failed to conceal his need of a hair-cut; his face became lean and haggard; no longer was his expression one of energy and confidence. A three days’ growth of beard on his jowls will take some of the confidence out of any man when looking for employment.

Then for days he disappeared.

Came a day when I saw him. It was blizzard weather; a sleety rain was carried on a high wind which swept through the city streets and wailed and whistled round the entrance to the Library building. A gaunt figure dragged its feeble way up the front steps to the semi-shelter of the pillars; from a face, piteously thin, hollow eyes looked out, their glance filled with a deep, an utter despair; a short coat pinned together at the throat revealed the absence of a shirt or underwear; through the cracks in the run-over shoes the bare flesh peered; wet to the skin as he was, he shook in the icy blast like a dog in a wet sack. As the doors swung wide at nine o’clock he did not lead the upward dash, but half way up the stairs sank down, overcome by a choking fit of coughing.

I never saw him again.

To live in a hovel; to drag my weary body for miles in search of work; to cough my lungs out like the man next door; to be submerged like a drowning rat in a sewer; this will be my life in Chicago. My eyes ache from gazing at confined spaces; across the way the bare walls rise; down the canyon streets I see the black ants of humanity crawl; overhead the sky is leaden.

Oh, my beautiful, my California! The whistle of the quail on the open benches is calling me; the mating songs of the mocking birds vibrate in my heart. Up the wide valley the warm wind sweeps, heavy with the fragrance of blossoming trees; on the uplands brilliant masses of flaming poppies and the silvery blue of slender lupines spread a feast of colour for my weary eyes; oranges blaze out in golden glory against the dark green foliage of the thrifty groves; the deep blue of the cloudless sky seems infinite in depth; and in the purple distance the white-capped peaks of San Bernardino and Grayback rear their lofty heads.