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Now the reader must know that this Burrham was a man who had got hold of one corner of the idea of what the Public could do for its children. He had found out that there were a thousand people who would be glad to make the tour of the mountains and the lakes every summer if they could do it for half-price. He found out that the railroad companies were glad enough to put the price down if they could be sure of the thousand people. He mediated between the two, and so “cheap excursions” came into being. They are one of the gifts the Public gives its children. Rising from step to step, Burrham had, just before the great financial crisis, conceived the idea of a great cheap combination, in which everybody was to receive a magazine for a year and a cyclopaedia, both at half-price; and not only so, but the money that was gained in the combination was to be given by lot to two ticket-holders, one a man and one a woman, for their dowry in marriage. I dare say the reader remembers the prospectus. It savors too much of the modern “Gift Enterprise” to be reprinted in full; but it had this honest element, that everybody got more than he could get for his money in retail. I have my magazine, the old Boston Miscellany, to this day, and I just now looked out Levasseur’s name in my cyclopaedia; and, as you will see, I have reason to know that all the other subscribers got theirs.

One of the tickets for these books, for which Whittemore had given five good dollars, was what he gave to me for my dictionary. And so we parted. I loitered at Attica, hoping for a place where I could put in my oar. But my hand was out at teaching, and in a time when all the world’s veneers of different kinds were ripping off, nobody wanted me to put on more of my kind,–so that my cash ran low. I would not go in debt,–that is a thing I never did. More honest, I say, to go to the poorhouse, and make the Public care for its child there, than to borrow what you cannot pay. But I did not come quite to that, as you shall see.

I was counting up my money one night,–and it was easily done,–when I observed that the date on this Burrham order was the 15th of October, and it occurred to me that it was not quite a fortnight before those books were to be delivered. They were to be delivered at Castle Garden, at New York; and the thought struck me that I might go to New York, try my chance there for work, and at least see the city, which I had never seen, and get my cyclopaedia and magazine. It was the least offer the Public ever made to me; but just then the Public was in a collapse, and the least was better than nothing. The plan of so long a journey was Quixotic enough, and I hesitated about it a good deal. Finally I came to this resolve: I would start in the morning to walk to the lock-station at Brockport on the canal. If a boat passed that night where they would give me my fare for any work I could do for them, I would go to Albany. If not, I would walk back to Lockport the next day, and try my fortune there. This gave me, for my first day’s enterprise, a foot journey of about twenty-five miles. It was out of the question, with my finances, for me to think of compassing the train.

Every point of life is a pivot on which turns the whole action of our after-lives; and so, indeed, of the after-lives of the whole world. But we are so pur-blind that we only see this of certain special enterprises and endeavors, which we therefore call critical. I am sure I see it of that twenty-five miles of fresh autumnal walking. I was in tiptop spirits. I found the air all oxygen, and everything “all right.” I did not loiter, and I did not hurry. I swung along with the feeling that every nerve and muscle drew, as in the trades a sailor feels of every rope and sail. And so I was not tired, not thirsty, till the brook appeared where I was to drink; nor hungry till twelve o’clock came, when I was to dine. I called myself as I walked “The Child of Good Fortune,” because the sun was on my right quarter, as the sun should be when you walk, because the rain of yesterday had laid the dust for me, and the frost of yesterday had painted the hills for me, and the northwest wind cooled the air for me. I came to Wilkie’s Cross-Roads just in time to meet the Claremont baker and buy my dinner loaf of him. And when my walk was nearly done, I came out on the low bridge at Sewell’s, which is a drawbridge, just before they raised it for a passing boat, instead of the moment after. Because I was all right I felt myself and called myself “The Child of Good Fortune.” Dear reader, in a world made by a loving Father, we are all of us children of good fortune, if we only have wit enough to find it out, as we stroll along.