knocked hopefully. Since it was quite impossible to open our eyelids, we did not reply. Mr. Adams again rapped gently on the door. There was no answer.

"Gentlemen," he said in a voice that could have broken any heart,

"are you asleep?"

But we were frantic for sleep. We did not answer. Mr. Adams waited another minute at our door. He wanted so very much to talk, yet he had to go back to his room with an unburdened soul. The damned Oklahomans has spoiled his evening for him.

In the morning Mr. Adams was full of strength and gay, as usual The concrete road went up in sweeping undulations and could be seen for several miles ahead. At the edge of the road, the thumb of his right hand up, stood a young marine, his coat unbuttoned. Beside him stood exactly the same type of soldier. The thumb of his right hand was also up. The machine travelling ahead of us passed these young men without stopping. It was apparently full. We stopped.

Thumb up means in America a request for a ride. A man who goes out on the road is certain that someone will give him a lift. If not the first machine, the fifth, the seventh, the tenth, but someone is sure to take him. Thus one may effect quite a journey—travel a hundred miles with one, another hundred with another, or maybe five hundred with the third.

We could not take two men, because there were four of us in the machine. The young men made an appointment to meet at the post office of the city of Amarillo, and one of them, stooping down, entered our automobile. He neatly placed his little suitcase at his feet, took out a cigarette and asked permission to smoke. Mr. Adams immediately turned his body around as far as possible and began to overwhelm our fellow-traveller with questions. Oh, Mr. Adams took a terrible revenge for the Oklahoma devastation! He laid the young marine out before our eyes like a laboratory specimen.

He was a mere boy, with a handsome, somewhat over-confident, even soomewhat impudent face. Nevertheless, he was a rather likeable youngster. He answered all questions willingly.

There was no use worrying about his comrade. He would catch up With him in some other machine. They had done that before. They were making a long "trip," a journey. They had been given transfers in their services from New York to San Francisco. They had asked for this transfer. But they were told that they would have to make their own way. They took a month's leave and had already been on the road three weeks, moving from one automobile to another. They had expected to upend three hours in Chicago but they spent nine days there.

"We met some nice girls."

At Des Moines they had also got stuck. They were given a lift by a lady who appeared to be quite proud. Then they took out a bottle of whisky and had a drink. The lady took a drink with them, and all her fade disappeared. Then she treated them to beer; then they drove to her sister's house, whose husband was away. There they had a good time for four days until the husband returned. Then they had to run away.

The uniform cap sat jauntily on the marine's handsome head. The large buttons of his uniform shone as per regulations. On the collar gleamed the brass globe with crossed anchors. The marine was not at all given to boasting. Americans are very rarely braggarts. We asked him in to tell about himself and he simply told us.

We heard a friendly roar behind us and we were overtaken by a black Buick that flashed by. Beside the driver of that car sat our fellow-traveller's comrade. They exchanged gay, incoherent yells. Our conversation continued.

The marine told us about his sojourn in France. There also he had an interesting experience. Once when their ship came to Havre, seven of them were given leave for a trip to Paris. Well, they looked over the city, then found themselves on Grand Boulevard and decided to dine. They went into a restaurant and began modestly by ordering ham and eggs. Then they got started, drank champagne, and so forth. They had, of course, no money to pay for it. How could a marine buy champagne? The garcon called the maitre d'hotel, so they told the latter:

"You know what? Deduct the price of our dinner from the war debt, the debt France still owes to America."

So there was an enormous scandal. The newspapers even took it up. But their commanding officer didn't punish them for it, and only reprimanded them.

What did he think of war?

"War? You know yourself. Not long ago we fought in Nicaragua. Don't I know that we fought not in the interests of the United States but in the interests of United Fruit, the banana company? That's just what we call this war in the fleet, the banana war. But when I'll be told to go to war, I'll go. I am a soldier, so I must submit to discipline."

His wages were twenty-five dollars a month. He expected to get better advancement in San Francisco than in New York, and that is why he had asked for a transfer. In New York he had a wife and child. He gives his wife ten dollars a month. In addition, the wife has a job. Of course, he should not have got married. He was only twenty-one years old. But since it had already happened, what could you do about it?

In Amarillo the marine left us. He gratefully saluted us for the last time, sent us his winning smile and went to the post office. He was so refreshingly young that even his misbehaviour did not seem offensive to us.

We spent the night in the plywood cabins of Amarillo Camp. We put out the stove and the gas ovens and fell asleep. The camp stood at the very edge of the road. Automobiles passed like the noise of the wind. The demonized travelling salesmen whizzed by and huge motor truck;; rattled by heavily. The light of their headlights was constantly passing over the walls of our cabin.

Amarillo is a new and clean city. It grew up on wheat. And although it is not yet fifty years old, it is already a real American city. Here is a complete set of city accessories—lamp-posts covered with aluminium, dwelling-houses of polished lilac brick, a huge ten-story hotel, and several drug-stores. As the saying goes, everything the heart desires; or, rather, everything for the body. For the soul, there is exactly nothing here.

In the drug-store we saw many girls. They were having their breakfast before going to work. If at eight o'clock in the morning, or at half-past eight, a neatly dressed girl with plucked eyebrows, rouged as girls rouge only in the United States (that is, heavily and coarsely), with manicured finger-nails—briefly, ready for parade—is having her breakfast, then you know that she is about to go off to work. A girl like that dresses in accordance with her taste and means, but always neatly. Otherwise, she may not hold her job, may not work. And these girls are excellent workers. Every last one of them knows stenography, knows how to operate a comptometer, knows how to conduct correspondence and how to type. Without this knowledge she cannot secure employment. However, these days it is hard to get a job even with all this knowledge.

The majority of such girls live with their parents. Their earnings go to help their parents pay for the little house or for the refrigerator bought on the instalment plan. The future of the girl is that she, loo, will some day marry. Then she herself will buy a house on instalment, and her husband will work for ten years without interruption in order to pay the three, five, or seven thousand dollars, whichever happens to be the price of the little house. And throughout the ten years the happy husband and wife will quake with fear lest they lose their jobs and have not the wherewithal for paying on the house. For then the house will be taken away. Oh, what a fearful life these millions of American people lead in the struggle for their tiny electrical happiness!