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.
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