The Winslow mail., 1900-06-14
ACITY FEAST
By Kennett F. Harris
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.,


II AN impecunious young man is un-
able to find anyone in Chicago who
is willing to give him job at some
form of digging and is ashamed to take
total strangers into his confidence re-
specting his financial embarrassment
he is likely to find that life is stern,
chilly reality, and that fast days are
likely to come too thick and fast for
comfort.
jefferson Bower, who, under an as
sumed name, is now rapidly climbing to
the top of the office tree, appertaining
to a Franklin street hardware firm, is
of that opinion, but he was still more
so about six years ago, when he first
came to town from the home farm in
the southern part of the state. He had
something like ten dollars in his pocket
then. He felt that in starting with so
much money he was to some extent
ieopardizing his chances of success;
that even if he did succeed the luster
of the achievement would be dimmed,
inasmuch as he would never be able to
brag of having begun life without
dollar in his pocket, unless he went
back to that period of his career when
he did not even have pockets. Ten dol
lars seemed like capital.
The great trouble with that capital,
however, was the way that it shrunk.
Jefferson did not indulge in any riot
Gus living. He would have liked to see
the sights, but he had resolved that
business should always be his first con-
sideration, and he turned deaf ear to
the drums and wry-necked flies that
doomed and squealed invitation before
the doors of the dime museums, and all
of the lesser delights of metropolitan
existence appealed to him in vain. Nor
was the young man buncoed-the ten
dollars simply melted away. Jefferson
says that in little over three weeks
from the time that he landed at the
union depot it was every cent of it gone,
and he could hardly reproach himself
with having spent any of it foolishly or
unnecessarily.
He rented room in Sedgwick street
for one dollar a week. 1t was not
large room, and it was too near the roof
for comfort, both in summer and win
ter; but then one dollar week is not
high rent for any kind of accommoda
tions, and his landlady was highly re-
spectacle and not avaricious. When
Jefferson went to her at the end of the
fourth week and told her that he had
not been able to get work, and that he
could not pay rent, she said: "Oh,
WE'LL" and then told him not to worry
Or get discouraged.
About a week after that Jefferson
got a few days work shoveling grain
in a Goose island elevator, and that en-
abled him to pay up his arrears and
gave him a little surplus to lay in a
small stock of provisions. He was do
ing light housekeeping on an old gas
stove. Sometimes the housekeeping
was painfully light, consisting mainly
of bread and coffee, with an apple or
something like that, by way of dessert.
He began to get hollOw-cheeked and to
lose his fine, healthy country color.
Once or twice his landlady made him sit
down in the little room that she re-
served for herself and keep her COM
pany" at her slender meal, but Jeffer-
son was generally sincere when he said
that he would rather not. He knew
that the good woman did not have any
too much for herself at the best of
times, and they breed a fine variety of
men down in that part of the country
that he came from.
At the same time, he says, he had
powerful hankerin's" after the good,
solid Egyrtian flesh pots. He yearned
for the pork spareribs, cornpone, hot
"sour milk and soda" biscuit, honey
and huckleberry pie whereon he had
been tenderly nurtured. but, most of
all and beyond anything, he longed for
chicken.
Chicken potpie, roast chicken, spring
chicken fried to a delicate, crisp
brown-chicken in any form whatever
Just so that it was chicken! Jeffer-
son used to lie in his bed in the spring
mornings with an aching void within
him and listen to the hens in the yard
next door as they crooned and cackled
in the narrow limits of their wire
meshed run. He could imagine him
self home again.
He was going out to the woodpile
now, but somehow this thought did
not seem to sadden him, as it might be
expected to. He actually whistled. He
grasped the AK and swung it vigorous
ly, and the basswood sticks, with a
clean white cleavage, piled rapidly up
around him.
Presently he stopped, and with his
right elbow braced firmly against his
hip, gathered up a towering load. with
which he staggered off to the kitchen
door, and as he went along the wind
blew little punches of gray chicken
feathers towards him. Inside. his
mother was bustling about the cook
stove that already showed dull
patches of red where the draught drew
the flame to the battered pipe. His
mother laughed as he toppled the load
over into the spacious woodbox with a
resounding crash.
That's a lazy mans armful, JEFF. y
she said. 81 guess I'll have chicken
every day, so you'll keep my woodbox
full for me-"
The changing gong of a trolley car
broke in upon Jefferson's drowsy rev.
erie and brought his wandering spirit
back to Sedgwick street. He rose and