I Never
Entered Into The Feelings Of Jack On Land So Completely As When I
Tasted That Coffee.
I suppose we had one of the 'private rooms for families' at Reunion
House.
It was very small, furnished with a bed, a chair, and some
clothes-pegs; and it derived all that was necessary for the life of
the human animal through two borrowed lights; one looking into the
passage, and the second opening, without sash, into another
apartment, where three men fitfully snored, or in intervals of
wakefulness, drearily mumbled to each other all night long. It
will be observed that this was almost exactly the disposition of
the room in M'Naughten's story. Jones had the bed; I pitched my
camp upon the floor; he did not sleep until near morning, and I,
for my part, never closed an eye.
At sunrise I heard a cannon fired; and shortly afterwards the men
in the next room gave over snoring for good, and began to rustle
over their toilettes. The sound of their voices as they talked was
low and like that of people watching by the sick. Jones, who had
at last begun to doze, tumbled and murmured, and every now and then
opened unconscious eyes upon me where I lay. I found myself
growing eerier and eerier, for I dare say I was a little fevered by
my restless night, and hurried to dress and get downstairs.
You had to pass through the rain, which still fell thick and
resonant, to reach a lavatory on the other side of the court.
There were three basin-stands, and a few crumpled towels and pieces
of wet soap, white and slippery like fish; nor should I forget a
looking-glass and a pair of questionable combs. Another Scots lad
was here, scrubbing his face with a good will. He had been three
months in New York and had not yet found a single job nor earned a
single halfpenny. Up to the present, he also was exactly out of
pocket by the amount of the fare. I began to grow sick at heart
for my fellow-emigrants.
Of my nightmare wanderings in New York I spare to tell. I had a
thousand and one things to do; only the day to do them in, and a
journey across the continent before me in the evening. It rained
with patient fury; every now and then I had to get under cover for
a while in order, so to speak, to give my mackintosh a rest; for
under this continued drenching it began to grow damp on the inside.
I went to banks, post-offices, railway-offices, restaurants,
publishers, booksellers, money-changers, and wherever I went a pool
would gather about my feet, and those who were careful of their
floors would look on with an unfriendly eye. Wherever I went, too,
the same traits struck me: the people were all surprisingly rude
and surprisingly kind. The money-changer cross-questioned me like
a French commissary, asking my age, my business, my average income,
and my destination, beating down my attempts at evasion, and
receiving my answers in silence; and yet when all was over, he
shook hands with me up to the elbows, and sent his lad nearly a
quarter of a mile in the rain to get me books at a reduction.
Again, in a very large publishing and bookselling establishment, a
man, who seemed to be the manager, received me as I had certainly
never before been received in any human shop, indicated squarely
that he put no faith in my honesty, and refused to look up the
names of books or give me the slightest help or information, on the
ground, like the steward, that it was none of his business.
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