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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