It was like taking off an old, worn, unadorning suit of clothes as the Boston Express whirled me away from the City of Mills. It hummed with me over the streets on which I had walked to and from work as a mill boy. It darted me past the rows of tenements where sordid and sinful memories lingered. “Thank God! Thank God!” Out and away from it all. Away from the hum, the bee-like, monotonous hum of the mill machines that overpower the nerves and dull the spirit of the workers! Away from the bells and blaring fog whistles that disturb the sleep of tired, weary, discouraged toilers; the bells and whistles that sometimes mean the jubilant clamor of the mills over their moaning, rebellious workers. Past the pale faces that waited at the crossings for the train to pass; faces whose eyes gleamed with an instant’s wish that the train had them in it, too! Yes, I was the chosen from among over twenty thousand workers that day. I was actually on my way to seek an education! There, for proof that it was no dream, was my long green ticket with its dozen coupons in my hands! There was my brand new suit-case! How lucky I was! Think of the fellows who had better mental furnishing than I, who had even money in the bank, parents who were urging them to strive for an education, friends who would loan them money, and yet, they were going to the mill at that very moment, and would go tomorrow, and the day after, because they were afraid to make the break! Then I thought: “Well, they would have made the break long ago if they had lived with an aunt and uncle who wasted their money on drink. That would frighten them into it. There’s some good in evil after all. I shouldn’t be on this train today if my foster parents had been kinder, more considerate! I guess it’d be a good thing if a few of the other mill fellows, who are ambitious, had something like it to frighten them off. It’s probably the only way they’ll go out and make their chance!” Then the vision of the country-side, painted in the glories of Autumn, the flashing views of cranberry bogs, crowded with sun-bonneted pickers, called my mind to the new joys of existence. Here I was, out in the world at last! Not the romp of a holiday, with the mill room for _next_ morning, not a vacation of two days with a return at the end of it; but the beginning of an education, a start towards a profession, a great big chance at last to “make something of myself!” “Here,” I said to the train boy, as he was about to pass me, “give me a packet of that there gum--the peppermint sort.” That train boy didn’t know, as I paid him the five cents by giving him a dollar bill to change, that the purchase was the greatest luxury I should have on that trip of fifteen hundred miles.