Crowded Out o' Crofield; or, The Boy who made his WayStoddard, William O.
General
Crowded Out o' Crofield; or, The Boy who made his Way
Stoddard, William O.
Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction
So soon was it all gone that Jack found his breakfast very
unsatisfactory.
"I don't feel like going to church," he said, "but I might as well. I
can't sit cooped up here all day. I'll go into the first church I come
to, as soon as it's time."
He did not care where he went when he left the hotel, and perhaps it
did not really make much difference, considering how he felt; but he
found a church and went in. A young man showed him to a seat under the
gallery. Not until the minister in the pulpit came forward to give out
a hymn, did Jack notice anything peculiar, but the first sonorous,
rolling cadences of that hymn startled the boy from Crofield.
"Whew!" he said to himself. "It's Dutch or something. I can't
understand a word of it! I'll stay, though, now I'm here."
German hymns, and German prayers, and a tolerably long sermon in
German, left Jack Ogden free to think of all sorts of things, and his
spirits went down, down, down, as he recalled all the famines of which
he had heard or read and all the delicacies invented to tempt the
appetite. He sat very still, however, until the last hymn was sung,
and then he walked slowly back to the Hotel Dantzic.
"I don't care to see Mr. Keifelheimer," he thought. "He'll ask me to
come and eat at a big Sunday dinner,--and to pay for it. I'll dodge
him."
He watched at the front door of the hotel for fully three minutes,
until he was sure that the hall was empty. Then he slipped into the
reading-room and through that into the rear passageway leading to the
elevator; but he did not feel safe until on his way to his room.
"One sandwich for dinner," he groaned, as he opened his bag. "I never
knew what real hunger was till I came to the city! Maybe it won't last
long, though. I'm not the first fellow who's had a hard time before he
made a start."
Jack thought that both the bread and the ham were cut too thin, and
that the sandwich did not last long enough.
"I'll keep my last twenty cents, though," thought Jack, and he tried to
be satisfied.
Before that afternoon was over, the guide-book had been again read
through, and a long home letter was written.
"I'll mail it," he said, "as soon as I get some money for stamps. I
haven't said a word to them about famine. It must be time to eat that
third sandwich; and then I'll go out and take a walk."
The sandwich was somewhat dry, but every crumb of it seemed to be
valuable. After eating it, Jack once more walked over and looked at
the fine houses on Fifth Avenue; but now it seemed to the hungry lad an
utter absurdity to think of ever owning one of them. He stared and
wondered and walked, however, and returned to the hotel tired out.
On Monday morning, the Ogden family were at breakfast, when a neat
looking farm-wagon stopped before the door. The driver sprang to the
ground, carefully helped out a young woman, and then lifted down a
trunk. Just as the trunk came down upon the ground there was a loud
cry in the open doorway.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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