Golden Dreams and Leaden Realities

by George Payson

A fierce struggle then succeeded to see who should obtain the post of honour. There were three next best men, the heads of their respective columns. But I noticed that it so happened that the one in front almost invariably gained the advantage. Whether it was that the other two parties neutralized each other, or that a straightforward course is always the best, the most the sidelings could do was to maintain their ground.

I was especially interested in the fate of one promising individual who made his approaches from the left. He had been for a long time the head of his party, and once or twice seemed on the very point of reaching the window. He even got one foot on to the topmost step, and with one hand grasped the window frame. His hat was gone—his face, by the violence of his exertions, had become nearly as red as his hair—his arm visibly lengthened, and I expected every instant to see his fingers starting from their sockets.

Still he clung to his hold with a tenacity that nothing could overcome. Once or twice, indeed, some one would get before him, and on such occasions it seemed absolutely impossible that any fingers, but of iron, should endure the strain. His head was pinned up flat against the side of the house, and he turned his face to the crowd with a look of mingled defiance and supplication, and a lurking consciousness of the ludicrousness of his situation, that were perfectly irresistible.

For nearly an hour he remained in this position, sometimes gaining an inch, and sometimes losing, till it seemed really dangerous to laugh any longer, and we were about to leave, when a sudden revolution brought him at last face to face with the agent.

"I'll take a ticket, if you please," he gasped, nervously holding out his money.

"No more tickets are to be sold to-day," returned the awful functionary, as if he had been the Iron Duke himself. "No more tickets."

This was the climax—the ridiculous had fairly reached the sublime—there was a completeness, a proportion in all its parts, that was beyond laughter—the mind could not sufficiently recover from its surprise and admiration to feel such a genial emotion. It was like a picture of Hogarth's, where our wonder at the painter's ingenuity interferes with our enjoyment of the scene itself—if it were not done so well, the first effect, at least, would be more striking.

But lest the tender-hearted reader should feel too lively a concern for the fate of this unfortunate Phœbus, and perhaps accuse me of hard-heartedness in the premises, I would hasten to inform her that all who wished, finally succeeded in obtaining tickets. Our apprehensions were, indeed, utterly groundless, for it is well known that there is no limit to the capacity of a California steamer.

Sunday morning, a week after our arrival, we went to sea. Nothing occurred during our voyage worthy of mention—we spent one day in Havana—had the usual proportion of storms and calms, and on the 9th of November entered the harbour of New York, nearly three years after my leaving home. Every object was greeted as warmly as if it had been an old acquaintance. There was Castle Garden where Jenny Lind won her earlier triumphs; and beyond lay the imperial city, every one of whose swarming thousands seemed to me like a brother. As we drew near the wharves, I felt that we were the great object of attraction, and my heart swelled within me with conscious vanity, as I thought how one would point me out to another, and say, "There goes a Californian!"