CHAPTER VI

HUNTING FOR LOST CHILDREN


The loss of our baggage was only the beginning of our troubles
in New York. With the feather ticks went also the money mother
had got from selling the bedsteads and other furniture. She had
nothing with which to buy food and while we were walking the
streets we smelt the delicious odor of food from the restaurants
and became whining and petulant. This was the first time mother
had ever heard her children crying for bread when she had none to
give them. The experience was trying, but her stout heart faced
it calmly. In the Old World, her folks and father's folks had
been rated as prosperous people. They always had good food in the
larder and meat on Sunday, which was more than many had. They
were the owners of feather beds, while many never slept on
anything but straw. True they could not raise the passage money
to America until father came and earned it--that would have been
riches in Wales. Now we were in America hungry and penniless, and
hard was the bed that we should lie on.

From Pittsburgh father had sent us railroad tickets, and these
tickets were waiting for us at the railroad office. All we would
have to do would be to hold our hunger in check until we should
reach Hubbard, Ohio, where a kinsman had established a home. But
while mother was piloting her family to the depot, two of the
children got lost. She had reached Castle Garden with six
children and her household goods. Now her goods were gone and
only four of the children remained. My sister was ten and I was