The Place Had To Me An Air Of
Liverpool; But Such Was The Rain That Not Paradise Itself Would
Have Looked Inviting.
We were a party of four, under two
umbrellas; Jones and I and two Scots lads, recent immigrants, and
not indisposed to welcome a compatriot.
They had been six weeks in
New York, and neither of them had yet found a single job or earned
a single halfpenny. Up to the present they were exactly out of
pocket by the amount of the fare.
The lads soon left us. Now I had sworn by all my gods to have such
a dinner as would rouse the dead; there was scarce any expense at
which I should have hesitated; the devil was in it, but Jones and I
should dine like heathen emperors. I set to work, asking after a
restaurant; and I chose the wealthiest and most gastronomical-
looking passers-by to ask from. Yet, although I had told them I
was willing to pay anything in reason, one and all sent me off to
cheap, fixed-price houses, where I would not have eaten that night
for the cost of twenty dinners. I do not know if this were
characteristic of New York, or whether it was only Jones and I who
looked un-dinerly and discouraged enterprising suggestions. But at
length, by our own sagacity, we found a French restaurant, where
there was a French waiter, some fair French cooking, some so-called
French wine, and French coffee to conclude the whole.
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