Chapter Thirteen.
Across the Atlantic.
Fritz was as prompt in action as he was rapid in resolve; so in a few days after he had imparted to Madaleine and his mother his intention of emigrating to America, his last good-byes were exchanged with the little household in the Gulden Strasse—not forgetting the faithful Gelert, now domiciled in the family, whom it was impossible to take with him on account of the expense and trouble his transit would have occasioned, besides which, the good doggie would be ever so much better looked after by those left behind and would serve “as a sort of pledge,” Fritz told Madaleine, “of his master’s return!”
Yes, within a week at the outside, he had left Lubeck once more, and was on his way to that western “land of the free” which Henry Russell the ballad writer, has sung of:— where the “mighty Missouri rolls down to the sea,” and where imperial autocrats and conscription are undreamt of—although, not so very, very many years ago, it was convulsed in the throes of a civil war which could boast of as gigantic struggles between hostile forces and as terrible and bloodthirsty battles as those which had characterised that Franco-German campaign, in which Fritz had but so recently participated and been heartily sick of before it terminated!
The love of colonisation seems to be the controlling spirit of modern times.
Some sceptics in the truth of historical accuracy, have whispered their suspicions that, the “New World” was actually discovered at a date long anterior to the age of Columbus; but, even allowing that there might be some stray scrap of fact for this assertion, it may be taken for granted that the first nucleus of our present system of emigration, from the older continent to the “new” one, originated in the little band of thirty-nine men left behind him by Christopher in Hispaniola, at the close of his first “voyage beyond seas,” in the year 1493, or thereabouts. This small settlement failed, as is well-known, and the bones of the Genoese mariner who founded it have been mouldering in dust for centuries. Sir Walter Raleigh—the gallant imitator of Columbus, treading so successfully in his footsteps as to illustrate the old adage of the pupil excelling the master, the original expounder, indeed, of the famous “Westwards Ho!” doctrine since preached so ably by latter-day enthusiasts—has also departed to that bourne from whence no traveller returns. So have, likewise, a host of others, possessing names proudly borne on the chronicle of fame as martyrs to the universal spread of discovery and spirit of progress. But, the love of enterprise, and consequent expansion of civilisation and commercial venture, inaugurated by the brave old pioneers of Queen Elizabeth’s day, have not ceased to impel similar seekers after something beyond ordinary humdrum life. The path of discovery, although narrowed through research, has not yet been entirely exhausted; for “fresh fields and pastures new,” as hopeful as those about which Milton rhapsodised and as plenteously flowing with typical milk and honey as the promised land of the Israelites, are being continually opened up and offered to the oppressed and pauperised populations of Europe. Thus, the tide of emigration, swelled from the tiny ocean-drop which marked its first inception more than three hundred years ago to its present torrentine proportions and bearing away frequently entire nationalities on its bosom, still flows from the east to the west, tracing the progress of civilisation from its Alpha to its Omega, as steadily as when it originally began—aye, and as it will continue to flow on, until the entire habitable globe shall be peopled as with one family by the intermixture and association of alien races!
It is curious how this migratory spirit has permeated through the odd corners of the old world, leading the natives of different countries to flock like sheep to every freshly spoken of colony; and how, by such means, Englishmen, Celts, Germans, French, Hollanders, Italians, Norsemen, Africans, as well as the “Heathen Chinee,” are scattered in a mixed mass over the whole face of the earth now-a-days, as widely as the descendants of Noah were dispersed from the plain of Shinar after their unsuccessful attempt at building the tower of Babel—the result being, that some of the highest types of advancement are at present to be found where, but a few years back, uncultivated savages, as rude but perhaps not quite so inquisitive as the late Bishop Colenso’s apocryphal Zulu, were the sole existing evidences of latent humanity!
Fritz, however, was not proceeding to any of these newly colonised countries. Like the majority of other Germans who had emigrated before him, he was aiming for “the States,” where, according to the popular idea in Europe, money can be had for nothing in the shape of any expenditure of labour, time, or trouble. Really, the ne’er-do-well and shiftless seem to regard America as a sort of Tom Tiddler’s ground for the idle, the lazy, and the dissolute—although, mind you, Fritz was none of these, having made up his mind to work as hard in the New World as he would have been forced to do in the Old for the fortune he could not win there, and which he had been forced to turn his back on.
Bremerhaven to Southampton; Southampton to Sandy Hook, as he had told his mother; and, in ten days altogether, the ocean steamer he travelled in, one of the North German line, had landed him safely in New York.
Seven years before, when he would have reached the “Empire City” during the height of the Secession War, he might have sold himself to a “bounty jumper,” as the enlisting agents of the northern army were termed, for a nice little sum in “greenback” dollars; now, he found sharpers, or “confidence men,” ready to “sell” him in a similar way—only, that the former rogues would have been satisfied with nothing less than his body and life, as an emigrant recruit for Grant or Sherman’s force; while the present set cared but for his cash, seeking the same with ravenous maw almost as soon as he had landed at Castle Garden!
Fritz had taken a steerage passage, so as to save money; and, being dressed in shabby clothes, in keeping with his third-class ticket, the loafers about the Battery, at the end of Manhattan Island, on which the town of New York is built, thought he was merely an ignorant German peasant whom they might easily impose on. They, however, soon found that he had not been campaigning six months for nothing, and so their efforts at getting him to part with the little capital he had were pretty well thrown away—especially as Fritz, in his anxiety to find some work to do at once, did not “let the grass grow under his feet,” but proceeded up Broadway instead of wasting his time by lounging in the vicinity of the emigrant depôt, as the majority of his countrymen generally do, apparently in the expectation that employment will come in search of them.
Still, he soon discovered that New York was overstocked with just the species of labour he was able to supply.
Of course, if he had been at the pitch of desperation, he might have found a job of some sort to his hand; but, writing and speaking English and French fluently in addition to his native tongue, besides being a good correspondent and book-keeper, he did not feel disposed to throw away his talents on mere manual labour. He had emigrated to “make his fortune,” or, at all events, to achieve a position in which he could hope to build up a home for the dear ones left behind at Lubeck; and there would not be much chance of his accomplishing this by engaging himself out as a day labourer—to assist some skilled carpenter or bricklayer—which was the only work offered him.
“No, sir; nary an opening here!” was the constant reply he met with at every merchant’s office he entered from Wall Street upwards along Broadway until he came to Canal Street; when, finding the shops, or “stores” as the Americans call them, going more in the “dry goods” or haberdashery line, he wended his way back again “down town,” investigating the various establishments lying between the main thoroughfare and the North and East rivers, hoping to find a situation vacant in one of the shipping houses thereabouts.
But, “No, sir; all filled up, I guess,” was still the stereotyped response to his applications, with much emphasis on the “sir”—the majority of the Manhattanese uttering this word, as Fritz thought, in a highly indignant tone, although, as he discovered later on, this was the general pronunciation adopted throughout the States.
“I suppose,” he said to one gentleman he asked, and who was, it seemed to Fritz, the master, or “boss,” of the establishment, from the fact of his lounging back in a rocking chair contiguous to his desk, and balancing his feet instead of his hands on the latter,—“I suppose it’s because I can give no references to former employers here, that all the men I speak to invariably decline my services?”
“No, sirree; I reckon not,” was the reply. “Guess we don’t care a cuss where you come from. We take a man as we find him, for just what he is worth, without minding what he might have been in the old country, or bothering other folks for his ka-racter, you bet! I reckon, mister, you’d better start right away out West if you want work. Book-keepers and sich-like are played out haar; we’re filled up to bustin’ with ’em, I guess!”
It was good advice probably; but, still, Fritz did not care to act upon it. Having been accustomed all his life to the shipping trade, he wished to find some opening in that special branch of business; and, if he went inland to Chicago or elsewhere, he thought, he would be abandoning his chances for securing the very sort of work he preferred to have. Besides, going away from the neighbourhood of ships and quays and the sea would be like cutting adrift every old association with Lubeck and Europe; while, in addition, he had directed his letters from home to be sent to the “Poste Restante, New York,” and if he left that city, why he would never hear how Madaleine and his mother were getting on in his absence!
So, for days and days he patrolled the town in vain; seeking for work, and finding none. The place, as his candid informer had said, was filled with clerks like himself in search of employment; and they, linguists especially, were a drug in the market—the cessation of the Franco-German War having flooded the country with foreign labour.
What should he do?
Before making a move, as everybody advised him, he determined to await the next mail steamer. This would bring him a letter from home, in answer to the one he had written, immediately on landing, telling of his safe arrival in the New World. He was dying to have, if only, a line from those dear ones he had left with a good-bye in the Gulden Strasse, recounting all that had happened since he had started from home—his passage across the Atlantic having lasted, according to his morbid imagination, at least as long as the war he had lately served through!
At last, a letter came; and, as it really put fresh heart in him—cheering up his drooping energies and banishing a sort of despondent feeling which had begun to prey upon him, altering him completely from his former buoyant self—he made up his mind in his old prompt fashion to visit some of the other seaports on the coast, “Down East,” as Americans say, in order to try whether he might not be able there to get a billet.
He had very little money left now; for, he had not brought much with him from home, originally and the greater part of what he had in his pockets when he came ashore had melted away in paying for his board and lodging while remaining in New York. Although he had put up at the cheapest boarding-house he could find, it was far dearer than the most expensive accommodation in Lubeck or even at a first-class hotel in any large town on the Continent. Living in such a city was actually like eating hard cash!
Fritz saw that he would have to proceed on his journey along the coast as cheaply as possible:— he had not much to spare for railway and steamboat fares.
With this resolution staring him in the face, he made his way one afternoon to the foot of Canal Street, from the quays facing which, on the North River, start the huge floating palaces of steamers that navigate the waters of Long Island Sound—visiting on their way those New England States where, it may be recollected, the Pilgrim Fathers landed after their voyage in the Mayflower, of historic renown, a couple of odd centuries ago.
One of these vessels had “Providence” marked on her; and the name at once arrested the attention of Fritz.
“Himmel!” he said to himself, with a superstitious sort of feeling like that which he used to ridicule in old Lorischen when she read omens in Mouser’s attitudes and cat language of a night—“this looks lucky; perhaps providence is going to interpose on my behalf, and relieve me from all the misery and anxiety I’m suffering! At all events, I will go on board and see where the steamer is bound for.”
No sooner said than done.
Fritz stepped on to the gangway; and, quickly gaining the vessel, asked one of the deck hands he saw forward where she was going to.
“Ha-o–ow?” repeated the man—meaning “what?”
“Where are you bound for?” said Fritz again.
“Providence, Rhode Island, I guess, mister. Can’t ye see it writ up?”
“And where’s that?” further inquired Fritz.
“New England way, I reckon, whar I wer raised.”
“Any ships or shipping trade there?”
The man laughed out heartily.
“Jerusalem, that’s prime, anyhow!” he exclaimed. “Any ships at Providence? Why, you might as well ask if thar wer any fish in the sea! Thar are heaps and heaps on ’em up to Rhode Island, mister, from a scoop up to a whaler; so I guess we can fix you up slick if you come aboard!”
“All right, I will,” said Fritz; “that is, if the fare is not too high.”
“Guess two-fifty won’t break you, hey?” responded the deck hand, meaning two-and-a-half dollars.
“No,” said Fritz; “I think I can manage that. What time do you start?”
“Five o’clock sharp.”
“That will just give me time to fetch my valise,” said Fritz, thinking aloud.
“Where away is that?” asked the man.
“Chatham Street,” answered Fritz, “just below the town hall.”
“Oh, I know, mister, well enough whar Chatham Street is! Yes, you’ll have plenty of time if you look smart.”
“Thank you, I will,” said Fritz; and, going back to the boarding-house where he had been stopping, he soon returned to the quay with the little valise that carried all his impedimenta—reaching the steamer just in the nick of time as she was casting off.
As he jumped on to her deck, the gangway was withdrawn.
“All aboard?” sang out the captain from the pilot-house on the hurricane deck.
“Aye, aye, all aboard,” was the response from Fritz’s friend the deck hand, who, with only a red flannel shirt on and a pair of check trousers—very unsailorlike in appearance altogether—stood in the bows.
“Then fire away and let her rip!” came the reply from the captain above, followed by the tinkle of an electric bell in the engine-room, the steamer’s paddles revolving with a splash the moment afterwards and urging her on her watery way.
Round the Battery at Manhattan Point she glided, and up the East River through Hell Gate into Long Island Sound—one of the most sheltered channels in the world, and more like a lake or lagoon than an arm of the sea—leaving a broad wake of creamy green foam behind her like a mill-race, and quivering from stem to stern with every revolution of her shaft, with every throb of her high-pressure engines!