It was some hours yet before the final separation of the last of the family party when Concetta, Nastasia, Giovanni, and Felicia Pulejo, and Gaetano Mullura should take the train for Boston, and it was passed in excited chatter concerning all that had occurred since they had last met.
Shortly after daybreak the Boston party, weary beyond expression, got aboard the coaches provided for immigrants at the dock, and were whirled away. I had telegraphed Stefano Smedele and the other Harrison Street friends what hour they would arrive, and there was another joyful reception at South Station, and another trip through a bewildering confusing city to the Italian quarter, where the last group of the party was subdivided.
Concetta is now living in the home of her uncle, and six months have served to make a great change in her. She has a new spirit, a new gayety and independence, and at my last news from her there are about twenty young Italians in and about Harrison Street who are madly in love with her, and from all I hear it will not be long before she makes a choice and has a home of her own. The chances are in favor of a fine young fellow who is employed in one of the factories as a machine hand.
Giovanni Pulejo is working as a barber in one of the South Boston shops, and Felicia is in one of the great shoe-factories at Lynn, Massachusetts. He says he finds the enormous machine process there very different from the handwork at the little benches in front of Merlino Carmelo’s shop back in Gualtieri.
Nastasia is helping his uncle, and is going to have a better education than he has. All have melted into the life of the Italian colony in Boston with an ease and an adaptability that are truly remarkable, and now that they have learned enough English to understand what is said to them and to make some answer, they are beginning to enjoy life. The younger people suffered severely from the unaccustomed cold of the winter, but all have survived it, and I really think Concetta and Nastasia are the better for it.
Stonington—The Barber-shop—The Squadrito House
When Giuseppe Rota and I left the Stonington pier, he was in a wretched state because he realized that he had kept me from carrying out my plans, but I reassured him, and when we reached home my wife and I took him out to the best restaurant to which we could presume to go in our poor attire, and gave him what he said was the best dinner he had ever eaten. The pleasure which the poor peasant lad took in all that he saw and heard about him is only partly expressed in a sentence from a letter which he sent back to the folks at home in Avellino and came, round about, back to me:
“The signor and signora were to me as are my brothers and sisters; ... the place was a palace such as that of the duke; ... the American people are strange in not liking to be treated with the honorable respect that should come from common folks.”
The next morning he shouldered his little blue striped bag, and we started for the Jersey City station of the Pennsylvania Railroad. On the way we encountered three men in a group, whom I knew with the intimacy of long association. None of the three recognized me, and passed with amused scrutiny. I called one of them by name, and he took to the gutter as if thinking he was about to be held up. Then came recognition, and I introduced Giuseppe. Suffice it to say that we missed the train we had intended to take.