A Point of Departure

— The journey across continent, from west to east, in midwinter, is very like a voyage. When one lands at St. Paul from the overland train, it is with all the sensations of making port after having passed over the ice-bound sea of the plains. The uniform dazzle of miles of monotonous snow, broken only where it sinks to indigo shadow or swells to crests of intolerable light, has for days given to the world outside the pane a sentiment of immensity rarely matched by the moving sea. There is majesty in the limitless sweep of level earth, so slightly overarched by the level sky, but majesty that becomes desolation when seen in intimate relation to human life. A furry team of horses struggling across the plains, drawing a meagre sledgeload of firewood along a narrow trail in the snow to some unseen farmhouse, hibernating through the long winter months for the resurrection of a few fierce weeks of summer sunshine ; a little schoolhouse of unplaned boards perched on a swell of the vast, silent landscape ; a farmhouse backed by barn and corral, with a tiny yard in front encircled by a tawdry frill of whitewashed paling, showing yellow above the snow, — all these, with miles of snow between, pierce one with a keener sense of loneliness than could any personal experience. The human element is so inadequate that one passes these scattered evidences of a struggle for life as, in a sound ship, one might pass a frail raft at sea. There are eagle minds upon which this solemn hostility of unconquered nature acts as a challenge ; one sees this in the voice and step and eye of men who have built Dakota and Montana towns. Sturdy and unawed, they have fought their way, and wrested for themselves a foothold on the great inhospitable plains. The level, iridescent blaze of cloudless winter days ; the treeless prairies aflame with color materialized in a thousand wild flowers ; the dreary swells of autumn brown, lifted here and there into sharp buttes of threatening stone, — each in its own way impresses the imagination, but repels the nestling instinct of home-seeking man.

The port of St. Paul once gained, one sees the meeting of East and West. Here the two are not blended the one into the other by imperceptible degrees; it is a sharp encounter. With the possible exception of the old Castle Garden, the Union Station at St. Paul is the most picturesque centre of distribution in this country. It is here that a large part of the westward-crowding world must halt. Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Poles, Germans, Britons, pour into the station as into the hopper of a great sorting-machine, are labeled with their tickets, and sent on their way. The peasant groups from north Europe are wrapped about with a dull and hidden romance. They have come so far, so laboriously, these small, overburdened women, clumsy in heavy homespun skirts wadded as with concealed treasure from the old country. In their arms and holding to their skirts are peasants of a smaller growth, in scarlet wool stockings and clattering shoes, whose blank faces have nothing, not even a cold in the head, to conceal. There is in the mien of these people such a curious mingling of dullness and suspicion that one falls to wondering from what harsh conditions this new life is an escape, and what future opens to men and women so ill equipped in all things except a capacity to work and endure. As one ponders, the flapping doors that give upon the outer platforms open and shut, and the West receives them into its capacious maw.

Of the many and sharply contrasted peoples who make this station the theatre of a moment’s tableau, the Swedes predominate. They, too, vary greatly among themselves, from the peasant, simon pure, showing a glazed tan upon the skin and centuries of stupidity about the eyes, to meu of local importance, who are full of affairs even at this last moment before going on a journey. The tongue bewrays them with its suggestion of the droll Swedish seesaw, but they are citizens. To this fresh, vital people of the north the negroes, who are about the station in surprising numbers, form a curious contrast. In St. Paul a negro loses all the oily blackness of a true ’possum-eating negro of the South ; in the cold his face blanches to a dry, ashy color that is pitiful to behold. He is utterly out of place, and yet he hangs about in the employ of a company that may possibly make him a porter in the tropical luxury of a Pullman car, — it must be hope of this that holds this wan lover of delight.

Beside the steady tide that flows through the generous arches there is an accelerated wave of excitement every ten or fifteen minutes when the station-master chants the arrival or departure of an Eastern, Western, or Southern train. The rush of feet over the tiled floor, the hurried buying of tickets, the coercion of dazed or sleepy children through the doors that open outward, are followed by a lull, which in time yields to the rising crescendo of the next wave. In the crowd, men hurry by in splendid fur coats almost to their heels, with collars rolled above the ears, oue great, shimmering, delicious caress of warmth and softness. Occasionally a well-dressed woman passes, glowing from the cold, with something in her swift step which makes one fancy that her furs, if touched, would emit a sharp snap of electricity. Nowhere else is the line between well and ill dressed so distinct. Fur is worn in every stage of disrepair, from deep, luxurious piles of Christmas newness to coats whose sleeves and tails show shining expanses of polished hide. In spite of all wrappings, the cold has a curious withering effect upon elderly faces, pinching the skin into heavy creases, so that it shows, as in a frosted apple, the native color through a thousand lines of cold.

The great station is an asylum from the cold to passers-by. Flocks of children, on their way from school, rush in for momentary warmth and shelter, their cheeks flaming, and here and there an ear rimmed with a deadly whiteness that shows where protection has come too late. Some of the children stay to romp stealthily, with an eye on the station-master, from one to another of the breathing registers set in the tiling of the floor. A preternaturally solemn little Swede slips away from her mother and shyly joins the schoolchildren ; but when she makes a discovery of the blistering air blowing from the holes in the floor, she walks, with dilated skirts, back and forth across the register in grave, unquestioning content.

But of all those who come and go, there is no figure so sturdy as the north country logger, in his heavy jacket of blanket cloth woven into a gay pattern of orange, red, and brown. High ankle-laced-boots swallow his trousers and define the turn of his strong leg, and a great peaked cap stands above his head, cutting the air in high disdain. It is no fancy that he carries with him from his hardy, adventurous life the balsam of the pines.

Beyond the doors, in the still cold, the converging steel rails stretch an unobstructed pathway to the Pacific Ocean, to Mexico, to Canada, and day by day, along these furrows, the unmeasured seed of an alien humanity is sown.