From Coast to Coast with Jack London by A-No. 1

Author:A-No. 1 [LONDON, JACK]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781891053863
Publisher: Garrett County Press

OUR TENTH ADVENTURE

"Sons of the Abyss."

BY freely making use of the facilities afforded by the washroom connected with the La Salle Terminal, we rid ourselves of travel stains. Then we set out to see the sights of the city. There was a lot to be visited in a metropolis as large as Chicago. So absorbing of interest was our exploring, that the night overtook us almost unawares.

Then we retraced our steps to the terminal. It was our intention to hobo from the city aboard of one of the numerous evening trains of the Rock Island Lines. On arriving in Chicago we had taken care to familiarize ourselves with the lay of the railroad depot. But this knowledge went for naught as after nightfall the police regulations were enforced much more strictly than those which prevailed at the station during the daylight hours. After any number of futile tries to get away aboard a train, we were compelled to remain trapped penniless by night in the populous metropolis.

Nevertheless, we did not falter. We knew that every city held an "abyss"—the stamping ground of hoboes who voluntarily lay over or, like us, were brought to a stay by adverse circumstances. On our inquiry, we were informed by a passer-by in the street, that the heart of the Chicago hobo abyss was located but a short city block only from the stately portal of the marble and granite magnificence of the La Salle Terminal.

In 1894 the abyss of Chicago reached northward on South Clark Street from the intersection of this thoroughfare with La Salle Street. There the distance of several city squares was lined with buildings the owners or renters of which exclusively catered to the trade brought to town or created there by the transient wanderers of hobodom and peculiar to them only. Other districts scattered over the city held the hangouts of the local vagrant elements and the various subdivisions of the underworld.

Bounding the Chicago abyss within narrow confines, actually it was the east side of the street only which held the "cafes", the dime flopping dumps, the nickel restaurants and barber shops and the "missions" patronized by the uncouth hoboes. Across the roadway, on the west side of South Clark, were "cheap" stores, the basement dens of vice of various degrees of viciousness presided over by slant-eyed Orientals and the boarding houses and booze resorts of low-caste Greeks, Sicilians and other human castaways of the nations of the universe.

Sight hunting had thoroughly wearied us and to seek a spot where we could rest for the night, we set out to explore the abyss. Jack London proposed that we enter one of the numerous rum joints and there become "chair warmers" until break of day—this meant that we were to roost astride of chairs.

We entered the nearest of the saloons. Eight drink dispensers held forth behind a mahogany bar. The fellows had a busy time of it attending to the wants of their thirsty customers. "Schooners" of a capacity so ample

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