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By Root 1820 0

and then he ran off to help his father with the hoeing I had interrupted. I carried the bucket around to the side of the barn away from the house, and I washed my face and my short hair, took off my jacket and washed my neck and my arms, took off my shoes and stockings and washed my feet. Opah’s cow and chickens watched me carefully, and a dog came, also, and sat at a distance, gazing sometimes at me and sometimes at something afar. I said as little as possible, croaking as low as possible, and they did what they were supposed to do, gave up intercourse with me as profitless. Toward noon, I turned the bucket upside down and set a dollar on the bottom, held down with a piece of a brick, then I set off across the fields again, toward the road. My feet were flaming. When I got there, Master Philip and his slave child were so gone that I could almost tell myself that they had never been there but had been figments of an early-morning dream.

Revived, I continued on my way toward Independence, and by late afternoon, the swelling of traffic unmistakably revealed that I was approaching that famous metropolis of the west. Independence is older than Kansas City or Lawrence by some twenty years, in fact looks to be of an age with Quincy, though differently built—no high bluff above the river and dark woods behind, but instead wide streets set in open, gentle hills, so that you feel the open spaces of the west are at hand, and all you need do is begin your journey. The streets were full of outfitting shops and emporia of every variety. Livery stables were everywhere, their yards full of horses and mules. I couldn’t help letting some of the grays, especially, catch my eye, and it was easy to go from that to imagining that Jeremiah was only stolen, that he might turn up here of all places, but I kept walking. Lyman kept walking. Lydia gawked at everything—houses, low white fences, flower beds and blooming roses, ladies in buggies with their children beside them, the dark faces of slave women in kerchiefs, with yoked buckets over their shoulders, chatting at the town wells, folks of all ages and types, old and young, black and white, tall and short, rough and gentle, going in and out of buildings of all sorts, or idling at corners, chewing on their seegars or spitting into the street. Even after Kansas City, coming into Independence was like reentering the world. I could stop here, refresh myself, change into a dress or—

I turned in to a men’s haberdashery, opening the door before I quite realized what I was doing. There, by pointing and croaking, I managed to purchase two shirts and a collar, as well as two pairs of stockings. Then, a ways down the street, I went into an eating establishment, and did just what I had done on the steamboat and in Kansas City: my dollar paid, I filled my plate as quickly as I could with everything close at hand (a piece of beefsteak, some beet pickles, corncakes and corn pudding, a piece of bread, some sliced cabbage, and a peach), and I wolfed it all down willy-nilly until I couldn’t contain another morsel. This place wasn’t so rough as some others; there were women here, but I ate like a man now, half through trying and half through habit—that is, I leaned over my plate, I wiped my mouth with my sleeve, I ate quickly and with a hearty appetite. I ate, in fact, as if no one were watching me (ladies always behaved as if someone were watching them, and more often than not, someone was, if only a sister or a friend), and when I was finished, I lolled in my chair and looked around, as if it were my prerogative to watch without being watched. Then I pushed my chair back with a scrape and sauntered outside. I did not, however, make use of the spittoon, as did most others; even for the sake of my masquerade, I could not enter so deeply into manly habits as that!

After supper, I made my way through Independence, turning south and traversing residential districts of considerable pretensions. It was well known in the west at that time that some Mormons made their home in Independence; not the same group that caused