CHAPTER XX

TO AMERICA AS AN IMMIGRANT

THE company's coal steamer brought me safely to Tromso. What a wonderful transformation had taken place during my two months' absence. Tromso had discarded her dreary winter garments and was now arrayed in a mantle of summer gladness. Her gentle slopes were covered with green grass and myriads of little wild flowers literally danced as they thrust their tiny faces towards the deep blue sky. Trees were in leaf, the air was crisp and clear and birds were singing. The atmosphere rang with the joy of summer time and the snow-bound village of the winter was a glorious symphony of beauty and happiness. I wanted to remain there the rest of my life.

But I was now homeward bound. My whole object was to reach Toronto, where I was to meet my father, by the quickest and cheapest route.

It was my plan to go by train through Sweden to Stockholm. My steamer for Narvik, the beginning of the railroad, did not leave for a day, during which I remained in Tromso. That evening I spent with several of my Norwegian friends at the Grand Hotel eating, drinking and making merry. In the midst of our good time, about ten o'clock, one of the bell boys presented me with a note. This little communication was from one of Norway's many Mr. Ole Olesens. This particular Ole Olesen was one of Tromso's butchers, from whom the company had purchased most of the meat for the mine. He was showing me a courtesy by asking me to go fishing with him about midnight. To engage in such a pastime at such an hour struck me as an odd thing to do. With the assistance of one of my native friends I wrote Mr. Olesen a cordial note--declining.

Anyway, I had another engagement for the rest of the evening. I called on the wife of a Norwegian army captain and a woman companion of hers. Her husband was in Christiania, two thousands miles away. On a previous occasion the captain's wife had told me through an interpreter that I was the finest man she ever knew. This sort of flummery was new stuff to me. Making love through an interpreter is a very unsatisfactory process, even if it is to another man's wife.

Whatever admiration this woman may have had for me was completely dispelled, I thought, by the displeasure she manifested on the occasion of this call. I had some difficulty in ascertaining what her grievance was, but finally learned that she was provoked at the method I had pursued in entering her house. I couldn't find the gate in front of her residence, so I climbed over the fence. My object was to get in and I had no time to spend searching for gates if such entrances were not in the places they should be. To climb over a fence at eleven o'clock at night in the light of the midnight sun was a fearful breach of Norwegian good form. What would the neighbours say to see a man entering her house in this strange manner at such an hour, when her husband was away? I left her house, disgraced.

I was on board the steamer for Narvik. The boat was swinging away from the Tromso pier. My displeased friend of the night before came running down the street to bid me farewell. By the time she reached the wharf I was beyond speaking distance--my boat was out in the stream. We could do nothing but wave handkerchiefs. I waved until my arms were tired and the lady was out of sight. I borrowed a pair of field glasses, and as long as I could see the poor woman continued waving. She may be waving yet. She had forgiven me for the fence episode. Hers was the first broken heart I had left behind me on the whole trip.

A dreary journey in a third-class compartment of a Swedish train brought me from Narvik to Stockholm. I saw this beautiful city as a real tourist. I was a comparatively rich man with the money I had earned in Tromso and Spitzbergen, and I lavished it rather extravagantly in an effort to crowd the interesting points of Stockholm into a short time.

I sailed from Gottenborg for Hull as an honest passenger of the steerage. My fellow travellers were Swedish, Danish and Norwegian immigrants bound for America. Being the only member of the steerage without a through ticket to New York, I was called before the captain of the ship, the second day out, for a cross-examination. He asked me several personal questions. I feigned that I was not used to such humiliation, and the generous-looking skipper said that he would leave my case to the English authorities.

When the ship docked at Hull, the cattle of the steerage were instructed to congregate in the mess-room for inspection. Presently a group of five British immigration officials entered the room. They were all dressed in blue uniforms with brass buttons, and these brass buttons seemed the biggest thing about them to me.

"Where is the tramp from Sweden?" gruffly asked one of them, directing his question to the captain of the ship.

"I presume I am the man for whom you are looking," I volunteered in as excellent English as I could command. I was standing beside the officer and he seemed somewhat perplexed when a response to his question came in the words of his own language from an unshaved tramp. The Swedish authorities had cabled to the immigration headquarters at Hull that I was on the boat, and I was thus assured of a reception.

"Are you a Swede?" was the officer's next question as he turned his eyes on me.

"Do I look like one?" was my flippant reply.

"What nationality are you, then?" he enquired sternly.

"I am an American."

"Where are you going?"

"I am going to America as fast as I can get there."

"How much money have you in your possession?"

"I have enough."

"I want to know the actual amount," said the officer impatiently.

"About sixty pounds."

The officer conducted me into an adjoining cabin and there I had to dig into my pockets, pull out my money (which I had converted into English coin in Stockholm) and prove to his satisfaction that I had some real wealth in my possession.

"I think this thing has gone about far enough," I said. "I am not a pauper and am well able to take care of myself. There is no need to suspect that I will become a public charge. This sixty pounds is as much as any one of you makes in a whole year. I realise that you are simply carrying out the immigration regulations and doing your duty, but why can't you exercise a little discretion and let a man, who is well able to take care of himself, go on his way without all this nonsense?" This complaint of mine seemed to bring the Britisher to his senses and with a few remarks in conclusion I was allowed to land; not, however, until I had promised to go directly across to Liverpool and take the first steamer for America.

In five minutes I was going towards London at sixty miles an hour. The first boat from Liverpool to Quebec did not leave for a couple of days, and I decided to spend this time in the metropolis in spite of the instructions of the immigration officials.

Nearly three years of travel had reduced my wardrobe to a shabby lot of garments, and I was afraid of being arrested for vagrancy. I wandered into a men's furnishing store on Holborn Street and purchased a complete new outfit, including a Scotch tweed suit and two English caps. I was now equipped to travel to California with my father properly dressed.

That evening I put on all my new clothes, hopped into a taxicab and was off to make a call. I alighted at Fulham Palace and presented to the servant at the door a card of introduction to the Bishop of London, which I had received from the chaplain of the British legation in Peking. In a minute the servant informed me that Bishop Ingram was absent from the city and was not expected for two weeks. I was sorry. I wished to end up by interviewing a Lord Bishop.

I cabled my father in California that I would meet him in Toronto on August 17th, and left from Paddington station for Liverpool. I bought a through ticket from London to Liverpool by rail, thence to Quebec by steamer and finally to Toronto on a colonial train--all for six pounds.

At Liverpool I boarded the _Tunisian_ of the Allan line and in a few minutes was lost in the hold of the ship among the two thousand English and Irish emigrants. My three cabin-mates were East End cockneys and they might as well have been Comanche Indians--for I was unable to understand their peculiar twang for a couple of days. The food was a substantial sort of stuff but was served as though the eaters were animals. And, as a matter of fact, the eaters were quite capable of playing the rôle of any trough-fed beast. "Pass the bloody jam" and "shoot the bleeding bread" were the customary phrases employed in asking for food. Profane and obscene expressions, which are not fit for print, although considered proper for the ears of the women of the steerage, were used at the table as so many platitudes. Seamstresses, Irish mill hands, English servants, cobblers, mechanics, barbers and an endless assortment of skilled and unskilled labourers of Great Britain were on their way to Canada to begin life over again.

After the first two days of sea-sickness were over, the fun on board ship began. Restraint and feminine modesty were cast to the winds, and the man who wasn't good enough to get a lover wasn't worth taking along. The women "fell" for anybody. "Down the bloody hatches" and on the "bleeding deck" and in every nook and corner were lovers. It was probably the most brazen exhibition of spooning I ever saw. It was a case of wrestle and osculate from morning until night regardless of how many curious and amused spectators were in the audience. The jesting and jeering of the onlookers seemed to act only as an incentive to the love-sick sea-farers, who were bent on having a big fling now that they were free from the restraint of home surroundings.

I spent most of the time as a spectator, frequently engaging in conversation with my fellow passengers to learn their ideas of this world and the next. I occasionally dropped into the first-class kitchen and made a friend of the chief cook, a good man to know when travelling steerage and living on its dessertless menu. I soon was the daily recipient of hand-outs and I very gratefully devoured the samples of cake, pudding and tarts which were prepared for the first-class passengers of the ship.

The _Tunisian's_ schedule from Liverpool to Quebec was nine days but, owing to the dense fogs, we were compelled to anchor for three days off the Newfoundland coast to avoid any chance of colliding with an iceberg. When the fog lifted there was no end of these huge monsters of ice in our immediate vicinity. On one side of the ship I counted sixty-five icebergs, and there were as many on the other side.

The twelfth day we pulled into Quebec and the two thousand steerage passengers were quartered in the immigration sheds awaiting inspection by the Canadian officials. I again encountered difficulty in proving that I was not a Norwegian cut-throat or a Swedish crook but finally obtained my inspection card which permitted me to go on my way.

I took a colonist train to Toronto, where I met my father, who had come from California to meet me. He had wished me Godspeed three years before from San Francisco, and he was now to cross the continent with me and help me complete the circuit. Our meeting was a joyful one. He didn't shy at my travel-worn appearance. I was dressed in an old suit which was spotted and covered with dust; I had a two-weeks' growth on my face and I needed a hair-cut and a bath. While my father waited in the station I sought the first barber shop I could find, and after an hour of cleansing at an expense of $1.55, I was ready to travel with civilised people.

Toronto was my native city and I had not visited it since I was an infant. My father and I, therefore, spent several weeks looking up friends and relatives before starting west. _En route_ to St. Louis, I took leave of my dad, and went to visit Richardson at his home in Fairmont, Minnesota. He had returned to America four months before and we had not seen one another for nearly nine months--since we separated in Constantinople.

During my two days' visit we each outlined where we had been since parting and related to one another our different experiences. Richardson remained in Constantinople two months holding down his job of electric wiring for Roberts College. In that time he made many trips about Constantinople and its environs and became very familiar with the Turkish capital. He made a journey into the country districts and got a glimpse of village life in Turkey.

His course through Europe was somewhat similar to mine and included Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, England and Scotland. He did not visit Austria-Hungary but spent several weeks in Germany, stopping at Munich, Nürnberg, Dresden, Leipsic and Berlin. From London he took a trip to Edinburgh, returning to Liverpool whence he crossed the Atlantic steerage to Boston. He arrived in America without a cent. Fortunately there was a letter for him at Thomas Cook and Son's office from his mother, in which was enclosed a money order for twenty-four dollars with which to buy tableclothes. He cashed the order and with the money bought a cheap ticket to Fairmont. Again broke, he arrived home after being away two years and eight months. At the time of my visit he had a position with the New York Life Insurance Company.

I joined my father in St. Louis, where I spent three days visiting a married sister, and we then continued our journey to California. My return to San Francisco was the occasion of the following article in the _Examiner_:

U. OF C. STUDENT GIRDLES GLOBE ON $3.85

Alfred C.B. Fletcher Travels Three Years as Teacher, Sailor and Adventurer

"Three years of adventure and 30,000 miles of travel through the seven seas ended yesterday when Alfred C.B. Fletcher, university graduate, journalist, school teacher, Government official, sailor and miner, returned to California with a Kiplingesque stock of personal experiences and jingling a silver surplus over the $3.85 with which he left San Francisco.

Fletcher was arrested as a spy in Japan, battled with pirates on a Chinese junk in the Chinese sea, visited Bethlehem on Christmas Day, attended the Durbar in India, toiled in a mine of Norway and has returned from the rough and tumble of world adventure to study theology for Orders in the Episcopal Church.

LEADER IN UNIVERSITY

In 1907 Fletcher graduated from the University of California, where he was a leading figure on the campus. He was editor of the _Daily Californian_, prominent in other affairs, and a member of the Golden Bear and Winged Helmet honour societies and the Psi Upsilon fraternity.

Three years ago he decided to take a graduate course in the school of hard knocks and see the world on his nerve and native hardihood. He bought a steamer ticket to Honolulu and waved good-bye to his friends at the pier with a promise that he would not return until he had swung around the belt of the Globe.

At Honolulu he halted for lack of funds to get him further transportation and entered the business of school teaching. Between school periods he took examinations for work as a Government official on the Pearl Harbour project, more from curiosity than a desire to quit school teaching. His examination marks were high and he was appointed.

TRAVELS ON EARNINGS

Several months of Pearl Harbour work got him money enough to go on, and he travelled for several months on the earnings. On this leg of the journey he was accompanied by a young Dartmouth graduate whose method of travel was akin to his own.

While in Japan they snapshotted pictures of Japanese fortifications and were arrested and thrown into prison. The services of the Secretary of State were secured before the two young college travellers were liberated. For the rest of their visit in Japan they were shadowed by agents of the Japanese Government, and they found the pursuit so uncomfortable that they shortened their stay.

In China Fletcher became instructor in a Peking school of engineering. He travelled leisurely down the coast to Hongkong, making inland trips and long stays in all the great ports of China.

By the time he reached Hongkong his finances were low and a trip across the China sea to Manila was made in a junk. On the voyage a typhoon struck the rickety craft, and the Chinese, believing they were lost, flocked around the images of their gods with shrieks of terror. Fletcher rushed to the deck, saw the danger to the unmanned ship, and compelled the Oriental sailors to return to their posts.

MORAL FORCE NECESSARY

For several months he remained in Manila, serving most of the time as an official of the Territorial Government in its department of education. From there he journeyed on to India and witnessed the Durbar spectacle.

His travel was broken by spells of work on land. Frequently he signed on steamers as sailor or deckhand. A long stay was made in Palestine. From the eastern Mediterranean he went up into France and England and, for the first time in years, looked into familiar faces. Many of his former college friends were travelling in Paris, London and studying at Oxford.

The experience in Europe took his last cent and he worked his way to Spitzbergen, Norway, where a friend of college days is superintendent of a mine. There he spent several months and gathered sufficient funds to insure his return to California.

Fletcher is visiting his brother, John D. Fletcher, at 2320 Le Conte Street, Berkeley. For a few days he will renew old associations around the university and after a visit to his home at Covina in the southern part of the state he will leave for New York to enter a theological seminary."

Three days in the vicinity of San Francisco, and I went to my home in Southern California. When in Toronto I had bought a ticket to Los Angeles and return, for I had planned to go to New York City to enter a theological seminary. I might state parenthetically that after six months of study for the ministry, I came to the conclusion I was in the wrong pew and gave it up. The change from a tramp to an embryo parson was too sudden, I suppose. The price of the round-trip ticket from Toronto and my expenses to California had taken the last of my Norwegian earnings and I arrived home broke. I had been away three years, had circled the globe and had travelled over sixty thousand miles.

THE END