AT THE GATES OF THE WEST.
Scene—The New York landing pier of the Ocean Palace Line, crowded with passengers and their luggage from the R.M.S. "Gargantuan."
Time—About five and a-half hours earlier than ours.
Mr. Horace Rutherford Penfold (the last thing in novelists, surrounded by New York pressmen): "Glad to see you, boys! Delighted to see you! What! Was I hiding from you behind my luggage? What an absolutely absurd idea! The whole way across I've been eagerly looking forward to meeting you gentlemen of the most go-ahead, most enlightened Press on earth! Yes, it's my first visit to your great country. The dream of my life is now realised. Yes, of course I'm rejoiced that my novel, The Love of a Hop-Picker, has taken its place among the 'best sellers' on this side. Yes, people are good enough to say I've broken quite new ground in making the hop-fields the scene of a novel; the critics say my word-pictures of the hop-poles are 'absolutely luscious'; and they pronounce Ozias, the hop-picker, 'a giant of artistic creation.' Yes, my novel is one of the twenty which in the last six months have been called 'epoch-making' and have been said to 'stand quite alone in modern fiction.' No doubt the hop-field will now be exploited by other writers, until in time it will become as hackneyed as the desert.
"Yes, this is my first visit to your wonderful country. I am here to superintend the rehearsals of the dramatised form of The Love of a Hop-Picker. Naturally I am a little nervous, for to please a New York audience is the playwright's dream of heaven. And then, of course, The Love of a Hop-Picker is not only utterly English in atmosphere, but also peculiarly Kentish. Still, with such a brilliantly intelligent, marvellously sympathetic public as yours, I don't despair of bringing the hop-poles over the footlights, so to say.
"Yes, gentlemen, I have a wife, and I've not forgotten to bring her sworn affidavit that my coming without her is quite regular and in order, because, though Ellis Island's a delightful place, no doubt, still, I want to go into your great Empire city 'right away,' as you say. Here it is: 'I declare that I, Agatha Mary Rutherford Penfold, and my dear husband, Horace Rutherford Penfold, are a perfectly united and affectionate couple; that his journey to the United States is taken with my entire approval, and that I should have accompanied him but for being an extremely bad sailor and afraid of storms at sea. (Signed) Agatha Mary Rutherford Penfold. Sworn to in the presence of—' and so forth. Yes, certainly, gentlemen, copy it by all means.
"No, I never heard of any literary talent showing itself in our family before. My father was interested in the retail meat industry; his father was interested in the retail bread industry; and his father turned his attention to the making of candlesticks.
"My impressions as I crossed? Well, I couldn't help remarking, ill as I felt, that, as we neared the shores of the New World, the waves took on better and more imposing shapes, the wind blew more smartly, and at night the stars seemed brighter and more numerous, and the clouds appeared to form themselves into stripes! Yes, this is my first experience of a zero temperature. The air is deliciously fresh: one seems to breathe in freedom with it. Well, perhaps I am a little cold, but that is because I have been waiting an hour and a-half en queue for a permit allowing me to have my luggage examined; and then, you see, gentlemen, I haven't the fur coat I bought specially for this visit; the Customs people have taken it away, and also the evening clothes I had made by Pond just before I left; so that I'm afraid I shan't be able to accept the very kind invitations I received by wireless to dine with the Brainy Broadway Boys to-night, and to-morrow night with the Chocktaw Club.
"What do I think of feminine New York? Why, of course, I think her the prettiest, cleverest, best-dressed portion of feminine humanity, and with an added charm—a New Yorkiness which is absolutely indescribable. No, I haven't met any of her yet, my knowledge of New York being at present limited to this wonderful landing pier, your greatly gifted Customs officials, and the brilliantly intelligent subordinates of your world-renowned Express Company.
"What do I think of Mexican affairs? Well, gentlemen, it seems to me that only Mexicans can make themselves really at home in Mexico, and that other people had better not try to live there—if living is their object.
"Yes, here is my photo and my wife's photo; my father's photo; my grandfather's daguerreotype; a black profile of my great-grandfather—certainly, gentlemen, I shall be only too pleased and proud to have them all reproduced in your scintillating, pulsating journals. So long, boys! Delighted to have met you."
