Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/55

 public should be thankful for the attentive services given under these near-slave conditions. As for myself, the reader has seen how I made it "pay" and I have no apologies or regrets to offer. When that final reckoning comes, I am sure the angel clerk will pass all porters against whom nothing more serious appears than what I have heretofore related.

While I was considered very fortunate by my fellow employees, the whole thing filled me with disgust. I suffered from a nervous worry and fear of losing my position all the time, and really felt relieved when the end came and I was free to pursue a more commendable occupation.

In going out of the Superintendent's office on my farewell leave, the several opportunities I had seen during my experience with the Pn company loomed up and marched in dress parade before me; the conditions of the Snake River valley and the constructiveness of the people who had turned the alkali desert into valuable farms worth from fifty to five hundred dollars an acre, thrilled me so that I had no misgivings for the future. But Destiny had other fields in view for me and did not send me to that land of Eden of which I had become so fond, in quest of fortune. Such a variety of scenes was surely an incentive to serious thought.

What was termed inquisitiveness at home brought me a world of information abroad. This inquisitiveness, combined with the observation afforded by such runs as those to Portland and around the circle and, perhaps, coming back by Washington D. C., gave practical knowledge. Often western sheep-