Life, in recent years, had not inured me to such arduous work. I think I could have stood the work more successfully than my trial in New York if I had not been weakened by starvation, but at the test of carrying a heavy barrel, box, or bundle, I could not stand firm and wavered as I walked, which frightened me. I realized that I must desist. I made an appeal to the boat officer to carry me to Louisville on the promise that I would pay as soon as I had earned the money. I was a weather-beaten hobo, and of course, not to be trusted, but my request was granted, providing I would leave my little bundle as a pledge that I would fulfil my promise. As I was leaving the boat at Louisville, I stood with my little blue jeans bundle in my hand. The purser was there to see that I turned it over to the negro porter. The porter had an austere cruel expression, but instantly, as we stepped back to deposit it in the porter's locker, his face turned to a glow of kindness and he handed me back the bundle, saying, "Hit the plank. Put it under your coat. You will not be noticed." In that little package were all my earthly possessions. It meant a great deal to me. So taking the bundle I slipped away. I was again homeless on the streets of another great city, looking for work. CHAPTER XXVI LOUISVILLE AND THE SOUTH "_Kindness is wisdom. There is none in life but needs it and may learn._" Shortly after my arrival in Louisville, Kentucky, true to the promise I made myself in Cleveland, I sent the Navigation Company the cash due them for my passage. I felt exceedingly happy that it could not be said of me that I had stolen my journey. In Louisville, as in every other city of the Union I have visited, I found it very hard work to get employment. I found the white man working for the same wage as the black man, the black man working for just one-third of what he ought to have been paid. This is true all through the South. I found the white men greatly embittered against the black men and declaring that the negroes kept wages down by being willing to work for far less than the white workers. This was not true. The negroes were just as restless as the white men because of the small pay for labor. If the black workers were willing, or seemed willing, to work for less pay than the white workers, it was because they were forced to do so to keep from starving.