Chapter Ten.
A Hard Fight.
Across the wide Atlantic—
It drives me almost frantic,
To watch the breakers breaking, and hear their dull, low roar!—
My soul is winging madly;
And my eyes are peering sadly,
As I span the long, long distance from my home-girt shore!
I was disgusted with America in more ways than one.
Being of a hopeful, castle-building temperament, I had sanguinely thought that I would meet with employment there at once; and, be able to master in some unknown, mysterious way, the great art of money-making, on the very instant that I landed in the New World!
I really imagined it, I think, to be an enchanted place, where every newly-arrived person became magically changed into a sort of Midas on a small scale; transforming everything he touched, if not into gold—the days of California were now over—at all events into Washington “eagles,” or Mexican silver dollars, or even greenbacks, which were better than nothing, although greasy and not acknowledged at their nominal value.
Upon my word, I really believe that that was my secret opinion concerning America before I actually crossed the Atlantic!
Probably, I would not have told you so had you asked me then; but I think that was my real idea about it. It was to me an Eldorado, where ill-luck was undreamt of; and where I should be able to heap up riches without the slightest out-of-the-way exertion on my part, in an incredibly short space of time:—riches that would enable me to return home, in the character of a millionaire, in a year or two at the outside, and claim Min’s hand from the then-unresisting Mrs Clyde!
Was I not a fool? Pray, say so, if you think it.—I won’t mind, bless you! for, I know that there are more such in the world besides myself, eh?