Being greatly pressed for time, I endeavored to persuade Giuseppe to go alone on the next train to Newark, and in the station even found a Newark man who kindly volunteered to pilot him to his uncle’s house; but once again he flung his arms about me, and, to quiet him, I bought another ticket and went along.
As we got off the car in Newark and turned into the Italian district, the strains of bands fell on our ears, and soon we saw decorated arches spanning the streets, crowds of people in holiday dress thronging the way, and later a procession came by in which scores of little girls, marching in white, preceded a half-dozen strong men bearing a platform on which was a saint’s figure. The people were celebrating the feast day of the patron saint of Avellino, and the figure was covered with purses, medals, watches, etc., while heaped-up gifts lay at its feet.
As we neared the crowd some Avellino youngster saw us and ran ahead shrieking that Giuseppe had come. Again there was a half-hour’s wild embracing, laughing, and questioning, in which I found myself entirely forgotten for the time being, and when attention was turned my way it was of a very suspicious sort. Giuseppe told his relatives when we reached their house (back rooms in a ramshackle old frame affair) of the several things we had done in endeavoring to help him, and everything he related made the people about more suspicious. All became silent but Giuseppe. I felt constrained to go, feeling most unwelcome and somewhat resenting the unaccountable attitude of Giuseppe’s friends.
As I shook hands with him, he drew forth some small money which had been given him by some one in the crowd, and offered to recompense me in part, and said that when his uncle returned he would send me the whole of what I had expended for him. He had already given me back the seventy lire. When I told him plainly, and made it emphatic, that what slight kindness I may have had the opportunity of showing him was not for any purpose of gain, and definitely refused the money, the people about underwent a strange metamorphosis: they hugged me and patted me on the back, two darted across the street for schooners of beer, a woman brought sweet cakes, a brand new willow rocking-chair was brought from another room for me to sit in, and for the remaining brief time I had to spend with them I was treated royally. Giuseppe’s cousin led in a joint apology for their coldness and concluded by saying,—
“You know American mans ain’t good to Eyetalyuns on’y he make de graft.”
When I got back to Houston Street there was a telegram from Philadelphia saying that Genone and the four Socosa boys had arrived safely and would go to work the next day, the four youths going out to the mines, and Genone into a chair factory until he could find employment at his trade of cheese-making. So I knew the party was all safely distributed, and my wife and I began the process of returning to our former state of life. It is strange, but true, that it took us a full week to change social station. At first glance there would seem to be no bar in doing it in a few hours. When my wife and I had gone with a part of our party to my office on the day of our arrival, not a person in the place recognized us, and a half-hour later the editor of Leslie’s Magazine stood talking with Antonio Squadrito for some minutes, with my wife and I standing beside him, without recognizing us, so it is no wonder that when I went to the storage warehouse to get our effects the clerk refused to believe I was the man to whom the receipt I held had been issued. Agents and janitors refused to show us apartments in the garb we were in, and our clothes were in our stored trunks, so it is easy to see why it was a week before we got away from Houston Street.
CHAPTER XX
THE STRUGGLES OF THE GUALTIERI BOYS IN NEW YORK
Few immigrants come to America these days who have not some relative already here, who has prepared some sort of foothold for them, and all have friends who will look out for their interests to a certain extent. This explains nicely the mystery of why immigrants will mass in the four States of the East which lie nearest New York, when the South is offering inducements for Italian and Austrian labor, and the West never has enough farm hands. I am in receipt of letters from large landholders in several parts of the West who want immigrants to come and settle on their lands, and do not understand why, no matter how much publicity is given to the advantages in the West, the immigrants persist in clinging to the East. The reason is that they wish to stay where their friends and relatives are, and their friends and relatives are already situated in the industrial centres of the East, where they in their turn had been detained by the first comers.
The two Gualtieri boys came “raccomended” to Ferruchio Vazzana and Tommaso Figaro, neither of them relatives, but merely friends, and both with enough to do in looking after their own family circles’ interests, so that the two were thrown very largely on their own resources; and their adventures in New York, on which I have kept a very careful eye without too much interference, form a very typical story of what befalls the “greenhorn.”
Both had a small amount of money, and, if necessary, Nunzio could have sent home for more, but his pride forbade. With Nicola it was different; the entire family fortunes depended on this venture, though I did not know it for some months: the bit of property his father owns is worth about $300, and represents the toil of a lifetime. This had been mortgaged for $60 at twenty per cent for six months, in order that Nicola might come to America. His wages as a cabinet-maker and finished carpenter in the village had been a most important factor in the family support. The family consists of his father and mother, his wife a girl not yet eighteen, and their year-old baby. To make up for the lack of this, the three adults all engaged in work of some sort until the time when Nicola could begin to send home the splendid earnings to which he looked forward in America.