Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 1.djvu/49

1854] & Madison Railroad. Every day this train went out into the country for twenty miles or so, loaded up with wood to be used as locomotive fuel, and then ran back to Indianapolis and unloaded in a woodshed. The work was light, the hours were easy, and the pay good, so that I enjoyed the experience (little dreaming what an important part railroads would play in my career) until prostrated by a serious attack of intermittent fever, with which I had already made acquaintance. This confined me to my bed for so long a period that my place on the wood-train was filled before I was able to return to work. After obtaining light employment in Indianapolis until I had fully recovered, I set out for Chicago, and arrived there at the end of October, 1854, a year after my arrival in the United States.

Leaving my trunk at the station, I walked all over the city. Chicago had then a population not exceeding thirty thousand people, though the inhabitants claimed that it was more. Then, as now, the best improved part was south of the Chicago River, while on the north side there were only a few short streets, and still fewer on the west side. Five-sixths of the buildings were cheap wooden structures. Hardly any of the streets were paved, and most of the sidewalks were of wood. Still, there was an air of stir and push about the town that indicated great vitality, and promised a rapid growth in the future. I felt sure that I had come to the right place.

In passing along State Street, even then one of the most important thoroughfares, I noticed under the sign of a boarding- and lodging-house the name Bernhard Norkin, that borne by the elder brother of a playmate of mine in Speyer. Out of curiosity, I entered and inquired for the landlord, and saw, when he appeared, that I was correct in my surmise. As he had left Speyer many years before, he did not recognize me, but welcomed me very heartily, and invited me, on being told that I was a new-comer, to stop at his hotel. I of course gladly agreed to do so,