My friend took me to the charming play, Peg-o'-my-Heart.
"Isn't it delicious?"
"The thrilling thing is that the fifth act is not played out here, but on the Campania, and I have to play that part myself," said I.
We got out of the theatre at eleven. I saw her home. As midnight was striking I claimed my luggage at the cloak-room at Christopher Street Ferry. At 12.15 I entered the Cunard Dock and saw the great, washed-over, shadowy, twenty-year-old Atlantic Liner. Crowds of drunkards were gesticulating and waving flags—Stars and Stripes and Union Jacks—singing songs, embracing one another. Heavily laden dock-porters, carrying sacks, moved in procession along the gangways. Portly Chief Steward Macrady, with mutton-chop whiskers, weather-beaten face, and wordless lips, sat in his little kiosk and motioned to me to pass on when I showed my ticket. I got aboard.
I returned with the home-going tide of immigrants; with flocks of Irish who were going boisterously back to the Green Isle to spend small fortunes; with Russians returning to Russia because their time was up and they were due to serve in the army; with British rolling-stones, grumbling at all countries; with people going home because they were ill; with men and women returning to see aged fathers or mothers; with a whole American family going from Butte, Montana, to settle in Newcastle, England.
It was a placid six-day voyage; six days of merriment, relaxation, and happiness. The atmosphere was entirely a holiday one—not one of hope and anxiety and faith, as that of going out had been. Every one had money, almost every one was a person who had succeeded, who had tall tales to tell when he got home to his native village in his native hollow.
Thousands of opinions were expressed about America. I heard few of disillusion. Most people who go to America are disillusioned sooner or later, but they re-catch their dreams and illusions, and gild their memories when they set sail upon the Atlantic once more. They have become Americans, and have a stake in America, and are ready to back the New World against anything in the Old.
"Do you like the Yankees?"
"They're all right—on the level," answers an Irish boy.
"Do you like America? Would you like to live there and settle down there?" asks a friend of me, the wanderer.