He felt magnanimous and wonderfully gracious.
"It's all right, my boy," he said heartily. "No use talking to me. To-night
when you came to the station to ask the fare to that hole of a place in
Michigan I saw you were embarrassed. 'What's the matter with that fellow?'
I said to myself. I got to thinking. Then I came up town with you and right
away you bought me a drink. I wouldn't have thought anything about that if
I hadn't been there myself. You'll get on your feet. Bidwell, Ohio, is full
of good men. You get in with them and they'll help you and stick by you.
You'll like those people. They've got get-up to them. The place you'll work
at there is far out of town. It's away out about a mile at a little kind of
outside-like place called Pickleville. There used to be a saloon there and
a factory for putting up cucumber pickles, but they've both gone now. You
won't be tempted to slip in that place. You'll have a chance to get on your
feet. I'm glad I thought of sending you there."
* * * * *
The Wheeling and Lake Erie ran along a little wooded depression that cut
across the wide expanse of open farm lands north of the town of Bidwell. It
brought coal from the hill country of West Virginia and southeastern Ohio
to ports on Lake Erie, and did not pay much attention to the carrying of
passengers. In the morning a train consisting of a combined express and
baggage car and two passenger coaches went north and west toward the lake,
and in the evening the same train returned, bound southeast into the Hills,
The Bidwell station of the road was, in an odd way, detached from the
town's life.
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