When the numbered sails of pilots hove in sight, and the lightships, guarding hidden shoals with their beacon masts, were passed, the steerage began to get ready for its entrance in the land of dreams. The song went up, every throat joining in:
“Oh, we’re going to the land where they pave the streets with money, la, di, da, la, di, da!”
Finally we sighted a golden band in the distance, a true promise of what we expected America to be. It was Nantasket Beach. That made us put on our Sunday clothes, tie up our goods, and assemble at the rail to catch a further glimpse of the great paradise. An American woman gave me a cent, the first bit of American money my fingers ever touched.
Then the black sheds, the harbor craft, and the white handkerchiefs came into view. I strained an eager, flushing face in an effort to place Uncle Stanwood, but I could not find him.
Nearly all the passengers had left in company with friends, but my aunt and I had to stay on board in instant fear of having to return to England, for uncle was not there to meet us. I saw poor Joe, the stowaway, in chains, waiting to be examined by the authorities for his “crime.” I felt fully as miserable as he, when I whispered to him, “poor Joe!”
After many hours uncle did arrive, and we had permission to land in America. I confess that I looked eagerly for the gold-paved streets, but the Assay Office could not have extracted the merest pin-head from the muddy back street we rode through in a jolting team of some sort. I saw a black-faced man, and cried for fear. I had a view of a Chinaman, with a pigtail, and I drew back from him until uncle said, “You’ll see lots of them here, Al, so get used to it.” When I sat in the station, waiting for the train, I spent my first American money in America. I purchased a delectable, somewhat black, banana!
Chapter IV. I pick up a handful
of America, make an
American cap, whip a Yankee,
and march home
whistling “Yankee
Doodle”
Chapter IV. I pick up a handful
of America, make an
American cap, whip a Yankee,
and march home
whistling, “Yankee
Doodle”
THE full revealing of the America of my dreams did not come until the following morning. Docks, back streets, stations, and the smoky, dusty interiors of cars, were all I had seen the previous night. When we had arrived in New Bedford, I heard the noise of a great city, but I had been so stupid with excitement and weariness that no heed had been paid to passing scenes. I had gone to bed in a semi-conscious state in the boarding-house where Uncle Stanwood made his home. But in the morning, after I realized that I was in America, that it was an American bed on which I slept, that the wall-paper was American, and that the window-blind, much crumpled and cracked, over the window, was the great drop-curtain which, drawn to its full height, would show me a stage, set with a glitter of things wondrous to the sight, I exclaimed aloud, “Chaddy, oh, Chaddy, I’m in America!”
Just as one hesitates with esthetic dreaming over a jewel hidden in a leaden casket, getting as much joy from anticipation as possible, so I speculated in that dingy room before I pulled up the curtain. What should I see? Trees with trunks of chrysolites, with all the jewels of Aladdin’s cave dripping from their boughs, streets paved with gold, people dressed like lords? All, all outside, with only that crumpled blind between me and them? Thus, with an inflamed anticipation and a magnified dream fancy, I hurried across the room, and let the window-blind snap out of my nervous clutch clear to the top. I pressed my eyes close to the glass, and there—Oh, the breaking-down of dreams, the disillusionment of the deluded! There was a glaring sun staring down on a duck-yard: a magnified duck-yard, bare of grass, of shrubs, criss-crossed with clotheslines, littered with ashes, refuse, and papers, with flapping mill clothes, and great duck-house; drab tenements, all alike, and back of them the bleak brick walls of a cotton-mill!