One Sunday afternoon he was lying in his hammock thinking, thinking of what a dreary place Alexandria was, anyhow, when he opened a Chicago Saturday afternoon paper, which was something like a Sunday one because it had no Sunday edition,--and went gloomily through it. It was as he had always found, full of a subtle wonder, the wonder of the city, which drew him like a magnet. Here was the drawing of a big hotel someone was going to build; there was a sketch of a great pianist who was coming to play. An account of a new comedy drama; of a little romantic section of Goose Island in the Chicago river, with its old decayed boats turned into houses and geese waddling about; an item of a man falling through a coal hole on South Halstead street fascinated him. This last was at sixty-two hundred and something and the idea of such a long street seized on his imagination. What a tremendous city Chicago must be. The thought of car lines, crowds, trains, came to him with almost a yearning appeal. All at once the magnet got him. It gripped his very soul, this wonder, this beauty, this life. "I'm going to Chicago," he thought, and got up. There was his nice, quiet little home laid out before him. Inside were his mother, his father, Myrtle. Still he was going. He could come back. "Sure I can come back," he thought. Propelled by this magnetic power he went in and upstairs to his room, and got a little grip or portmanteau he had. He put in it the things he thought he would immediately need. In his pocket were nine dollars, money he had been saving for some time. Finally he came downstairs and stood in the door of the sitting room. "What's the matter?" asked his mother, looking at his solemn introspective face. "I'm going to Chicago," he said. "When?" she asked, astonished, a little uncertain of just what he meant. "Today," he said. "No, you're joking." She smiled unbelievingly. This was a boyish prank. "I'm going today," he said. "I'm going to catch that four o'clock train." Her face saddened. "You're not?" she said. "I can come back," he replied, "if I want to. I want to get something else to do." His father came in at this time. He had a little work room out in the barn where he sometimes cleaned machines and repaired vehicles. He was fresh from such a task now. "What's up?" he asked, seeing his wife close to her boy. "Eugene's going to Chicago." "Since when?" he inquired amusedly. "Today. He says he's going right now." "You don't mean it," said Witla, astonished. He really did not believe it. "Why don't you take a little time and think it over? What are you going to live on?" "I'll live," said Eugene. "I'm going. I've had enough of this place. I'm going to get out." "All right," said his father, who, after all, believed in initiative. Evidently after all he hadn't quite understood this boy. "Got your trunk packed?" "No, but mother can send me that."