Chapter IV. I pick up a handful
of America, make an
American cap, whip a Yankee,
and march home
whistling “Yankee
Doodle”
THE full revealing of the America of my dreams did not come until the following morning. Docks, back streets, stations, and the smoky, dusty interiors of cars, were all I had seen the previous night. When we had arrived in New Bedford, I heard the noise of a great city, but I had been so stupid with excitement and weariness that no heed had been paid to passing scenes. I had gone to bed in a semi-conscious state in the boarding-house where Uncle Stanwood made his home. But in the morning, after I realized that I was in America, that it was an American bed on which I slept, that the wall-paper was American, and that the window-blind, much crumpled and cracked, over the window, was the great drop-curtain which, drawn to its full height, would show me a stage, set with a glitter of things wondrous to the sight, I exclaimed aloud, “Chaddy, oh, Chaddy, I’m in America!”
Just as one hesitates with esthetic dreaming over a jewel hidden in a leaden casket, getting as much joy from anticipation as possible, so I speculated in that dingy room before I pulled up the curtain. What should I see? Trees with trunks of chrysolites, with all the jewels of Aladdin’s cave dripping from their boughs, streets paved with gold, people dressed like lords? All, all outside, with only that crumpled blind between me and them? Thus, with an inflamed anticipation and a magnified dream fancy, I hurried across the room, and let the window-blind snap out of my nervous clutch clear to the top. I pressed my eyes close to the glass, and there—Oh, the breaking-down of dreams, the disillusionment of the deluded! There was a glaring sun staring down on a duck-yard: a magnified duck-yard, bare of grass, of shrubs, criss-crossed with clotheslines, littered with ashes, refuse, and papers, with flapping mill clothes, and great duck-house; drab tenements, all alike, and back of them the bleak brick walls of a cotton-mill!
But never mind, I was in America! Chaddy was not. The scene I had looked upon was disheartening, somewhat like a sudden blow in the face, for those box-like, wooden duck-houses were not to be compared with the ivy-covered, romantic rows of Hadfield with their flower-gardens, arches, and slate roofs! But I was in America, anyway!
We had the breakfast-table to ourselves, uncle, aunt, and myself, for the boarders had gone to work long ago, and this was our holiday, our first American day! What are those round golden things with holes in? Doughnuts? They don’t grow on trees, do they? Baked? Isn’t it funny they call them “nuts?” I don’t taste any nut flavor to them. But I could not linger too long at the table with all America waiting to be explored.
“Don’t gulp down things like that,” warned aunt, “you’ll be sick, proper sick. Chew your food!”
“I want to go out and see America, aunt!”
“All right,” she assented. “Go on out, but mind the American lads, now!”
So I left the house, and the first act done when I reached the gate had in it, crystallized, the deep reverence an alien feels for America. I bent down and picked up a handful of dirt. I wanted to feel America.
Then I walked down the street of tenements, looking for an outlet from them, and hoping to get away from the shadow of the mill. At last the tenements were passed, and I saw some vacant building lots, with huge, gaudy sign boards staring from them. It was here that I heard a voice from across the road, shouting in broad derision, “Strike him!” A group of school boys were pointing at me. In the hasty survey I gave them, I noted that they all wore round caps. Mine had a shining visor on it. I hurried along behind one of those huge signs, took out my pocket knife, and slashed off the visor. Immediately I felt Americanized. I went forth with some show of a swagger, for I thought that now, wearing a round cap, everybody would take me for a full-fledged American!
But it was not so. Under a railway viaduct, where the shadows were thick and cool, I was met by a lad of my own age, but with twenty times more swagger and pertness showing on him. When he saw me, he frowned at first, then, grinning insultingly, he came to within two inches of me, planted himself belligerently, and mocked, “’Ello, Green’orn! Just come acrost, ’ast?” Whereat, knowing full well that he was heaping slander on my mother speech, I threw caution to the winds, hurled myself at him, and was soon engaged in tense battle. The fight did not last long, for, keeping up the English schoolboy tradition, I not only pounded with clenched fists, but freely used my feet—a combination that put to nought whatever pugilistic skill my antagonist possessed.
“No fair, usin’ feet,” he complained, as he nursed a bruised shin and hobbled off, “Green’orn!”
That word, “Greenhorn,” startled me. I cautiously felt of my head, for it flashed into my mind that it was very possible, in this magic land, that English people grew green horns immediately upon arrival; but I was consoled to find that none had sprouted overnight.
I continued my exploration, and found myself surrounded on every hand by mills, tenements, and shops. The streets were very dirty: the whole scene was as squalid as could be. Yet, the thought kept comforting me, I was in America. I returned home, covered with burdock burrs, arranged in the form of epaulets, stripes, and soldier buttons, whistling with gusto a shrill rendition of “Yankee Doodle.” So ended my first morning as an American.