Monday's setting sun saw me outside Buffalo, tired, but with a
new purpose. I had walked fifty miles without stopping or eating.
I slept under a shed that night, and the very next day found work
at good wages on some steamers the Erie Railroad was then building
for the Lake Superior trade. With intervals of other employment
when for any reason work in the ship-yard was slack, I kept that up
all winter, and became quite opulent, even to the extent of buying
a new suit of clothes, the first I had had since I landed. I paid
off all my debts, and quarrelled with all my friends about religion.
I never had any patience with a person who says "there is no God."
The man is a fool, and therefore cannot be reasoned with. But in
those days I was set on converting him, as my viking forefathers
did when from heathen they became Christians--by fire and sword if
need be. I smote the infidels about me hip and thigh, but there
were a good many of them, and they kept springing up, to my great
amazement. Probably the constant warfare imparted a tinge of
fierceness to that whole period of my life, for I remember that
one of my employers, a Roman Catholic builder, discharged me for
disagreeing with him about the saints, telling me that I was "too
blamed independent, anyhow.
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