THE DISPERSION
When I went to get Giuseppe Rota, I found the officials at the immigrant
home were very loath to let him go. He was seated at one of the long
tables of the big barracks-like house, with forty other men, women, and
children, and was enjoying a hearty meal, notwithstanding his anxiety as
to his ultimate fate. Since he had got into their hands the management
was chary of relinquishing him to me, even though I had committed him,
and poor Giuseppe protested volubly that I had been more than a father
to him, and that his only hope of reaching his uncle was through me.
After a tiresome explanation I signed a receipt for him and gave
references for myself, which were promptly looked up, and then we were
allowed to depart.
The next task was to find Ferruchio Vazzana, a Gualtieri man who at that
time had a small store on East Fifteenth Street near Second Avenue, and
to whom Nunzio Giunta was “raccomended”; then Tommaso Figaro, a painter
from Gualtieri, who would be sponsor for Nicola Curro. His address was
520 East Fourteenth Street. Nicola and Nunzio went with Antonio and me,
and we had barely entered the Italian district of that part of the city
when two or three men from different directions came flying toward us,
throwing their arms about Nunzio, Nicola, and Antonio. They were all
Gualtieri people, and in a few minutes I found myself outside of an
excited throng centred about the newcomers and talking at a rate that
left me entirely in the dark as to what was being said. When they did
remember me, the boys found great difficulty in explaining how I, an
“American proper,” came to be so closely associated with them, and I
noticed a marked cooling of the enthusiasm among the people about. They
were extremely suspicious of me.
In the crowd were two brothers of Tommaso Figaro, and they led the way
to his little two-roomed home, for the first of a series of visits about
the tenements of the neighborhood, among old friends from the village,
which I was compelled to terminate at last by dragging Antonio away and
starting for Ellis Island to look after the baggage. Nicola and Nunzio
were left in the midst of their friends, who were chaffing them, calling
them “greenhorns,” and poking fun at their “old-country” clothes. We met
other lately arrived immigrants, some who had been with us on the
_Prinzessin Irene_, and pressure was being brought on them to get them
to lay aside the attire which marked them as new arrivals. A month later
Nunzio and Nicola did not look like the same men.
When we arrived at the Barge Office, Mike Delaney, the veteran Battery
policeman, who has handled millions of immigrants, was lining up the
_aspettati_ to go on board the boat which was substituting for the old
_John G. Carlisle_, she having broken down at last, and we found
ourselves jammed among hundreds. It happened that the morning newspapers
had had articles concerning the arrival of our party, and wherever we
went the word was passed among the immigration officials that Antonio
and I were the leaders of the group.
We found that a part of the baggage had already been sent to the pier of
the Stonington Line, but some of the trunks had heavy customs charges
against them, and the owners, Concetta, Nastasia, and Pulejo must sign
the papers in Boston. We contrived to get through in time to catch the
second boat back, and only emerged at all from the tangle of checking,
expressing, and receipting at the Barge Office by the kindly aid of the
officials there. I found myself wondering how the immigrants who persist
in bringing such confused quantities of baggage ever get it to its
destination at all, and was thankful that our troubles with our
_impedimenta_ were about over. Vain was my fancy, for there are tracers
out for some of it yet.
On the returning boat I had an interesting talk with a Russian Jew by
the name of Mottet Ianjge, who had just arrived. He came from near
Odessa and had been met by his brother, a hatmaker employed by a
Waverley Place firm, who acted as interpreter for us.
Mottet had just finished his term of enforced service in the Russian
army, and had more than once been compelled to act in procedures against
his own people, whom he said were driven about from pillar to post by
the Russian authorities in a way that made America seem like a heaven to
them; and when letters came from their relatives here, telling them of
how free and easy life was, they were wild to escape from their
surroundings, and many more would have followed his example but for the
fact that officially circulated reports hinted of strange dangers and
hardships which the immigrants must undergo. Before he entered the army
he had been working for a farmer who paid him about $2.50 a week. The
farmers through all that part of the country owned their own land, and
their farms averaged in size from forty to fifty acres. Mortgages on
these farms were increasing in number, and many of them were held by
wealthy Jews in the towns. In the army Mottet averred his pay was
forty-five cents per month, and his treatment was of the roughest sort.
He was in fine physical condition, though, and looked forward to his
work in this country with great eagerness.
[Illustration: Mr. Broughton Brandenburg, as He Looked when He Passed
through Ellis Island as an Immigrant]
He pointed out to me a man, twenty years older than himself, heavily
bearded, wearing the odd Russian cap, and with boots to his knees, whom
he said had been cruelly treated by the Christians in his village, and
had lost all his property through fire, as well as his wife and
daughter. His only son was a conscript, and his father did not even know
where he was, so he had borrowed enough money to come to America to
begin life over again at the commencement of his old age.
By using great haste we got the party assembled and down to the
Stonington Line pier in time to catch the night boat. I had intended to
go with the Squadritos to Stonington, to see them entirely through to
their destination, but an unforeseen obstacle arose in the form of
Giuseppe Rota. Because he refused to be left alone to look after
himself, I had been lugging him about all the latter end of the
afternoon, and when we made our way down to the boat it suddenly
occurred to me that if I went to Stonington I must either take him
along, leave him standing in the darkness on the pier, or find some one
to take care of him. It seemed easy enough to call a messenger boy, but
when the uniformed mite arrived and I committed Giuseppe to his care to
be taken back to 147 West Houston Street, Giuseppe raised his voice to
heaven and bellowed like a bull, clinging about my shoulders and
protesting that he was afraid I was sending him away to lose him, so
that he might never see his uncle or any of his _compadres_ from
Avellino again, and if I did he vowed he would end all his suspense and
suffering by plunging off into the dark river then and there, so I
dismissed the messenger and took the party aboard, bade them good-bye
for a short time, and took Giuseppe home again.
The group was quartered in the steerage compartments forward, which are
often filled with two or three hundred immigrants, and inasmuch as they
knew they would arrive in Stonington about two o’clock the next morning,
they refused to try to get any sleep, but sat about talking and singing
while the boat ploughed up the Sound. Ina, however, went to sleep in her
mother’s arms, and her mother alternately laughed and cried, and hugged
and kissed the sleeping child as she thought of the diminishing hours
that separated her from her husband.
There were many other Italians aboard, all bound to the New England
manufacturing towns, and they made merry on the way, and related the
wonders which they had seen so far in the great new country.
At last the big whistle sounded in a long blast, and the boat slowed
down. Soon she was bumping against the pier, and an officer was routing
out the immigrants and getting them ashore.
Antonio and Giovanni Pulejo were the first on deck, and as they appeared
at the end of the plank a wild shout went up from a black group in the
shadow, and they heard the familiar voices of Giuseppe, Tommaso, and
Carlino calling their names through the darkness.
Soon all were ashore and mingling in a wild scene of embracing and
kissing, men and women, men and men, women and women. When Camela had
Giuseppe’s arms about her at last, all she could do was to lay her tired
head on his shoulder and weep, while Ina stood at one side gazing with
wonder on the strange, handsome man who was her father. She was having
her first sight of him that she could remember, and preferred to take as
good a survey as she could get in the dim light, from a point outside of
the zone of embraces. When she had a chance she said to Concetta,
“I thought he was three times bigger than that, but he is nice.”
At last the party formed a procession, with Antonio and his happy wife
in the lead, and marched up from the dock to the substantial old house
on Water Street, on the first floor of which, fronting on the street,
Antonio had his barber shop. He found that during his absence his
brothers had had a disagreement about affairs in the shop, and Carlino
had gone off to work for another barber. Carlino’s welcome, while warm
enough, had a certain bitter tang in it which was the result of his
acquired disdain of anything Italian, and his lack of sympathy for the
things at home which made up the principal subject of interest in the
family party just then. He has pronounced himself as all-American, and
says he will never go back to Italy, no matter what happens, not even
for a visit.
It was some hours yet before the final separation of the last of the
family party when Concetta, Nastasia, Giovanni, and Felicia Pulejo, and
Gaetano Mullura should take the train for Boston, and it was passed in
excited chatter concerning all that had occurred since they had last
met.
Shortly after daybreak the Boston party, weary beyond expression, got
aboard the coaches provided for immigrants at the dock, and were whirled
away. I had telegraphed Stefano Smedele and the other Harrison Street
friends what hour they would arrive, and there was another joyful
reception at South Station, and another trip through a bewildering
confusing city to the Italian quarter, where the last group of the party
was subdivided.
Concetta is now living in the home of her uncle, and six months have
served to make a great change in her. She has a new spirit, a new gayety
and independence, and at my last news from her there are about twenty
young Italians in and about Harrison Street who are madly in love with
her, and from all I hear it will not be long before she makes a choice
and has a home of her own. The chances are in favor of a fine young
fellow who is employed in one of the factories as a machine hand.
Giovanni Pulejo is working as a barber in one of the South Boston shops,
and Felicia is in one of the great shoe-factories at Lynn,
Massachusetts. He says he finds the enormous machine process there very
different from the handwork at the little benches in front of Merlino
Carmelo’s shop back in Gualtieri.
Nastasia is helping his uncle, and is going to have a better education
than he has. All have melted into the life of the Italian colony in
Boston with an ease and an adaptability that are truly remarkable, and
now that they have learned enough English to understand what is said to
them and to make some answer, they are beginning to enjoy life. The
younger people suffered severely from the unaccustomed cold of the
winter, but all have survived it, and I really think Concetta and
Nastasia are the better for it.
[Illustration: Stonington—The Barber-shop—The Squadrito House]
When Giuseppe Rota and I left the Stonington pier, he was in a wretched
state because he realized that he had kept me from carrying out my
plans, but I reassured him, and when we reached home my wife and I took
him out to the best restaurant to which we could presume to go in our
poor attire, and gave him what he said was the best dinner he had ever
eaten. The pleasure which the poor peasant lad took in all that he saw
and heard about him is only partly expressed in a sentence from a letter
which he sent back to the folks at home in Avellino and came, round
about, back to me:
“The signor and signora were to me as are my brothers and sisters; ...
the place was a palace such as that of the duke; ... the American people
are strange in not liking to be treated with the honorable respect that
should come from common folks.”
The next morning he shouldered his little blue striped bag, and we
started for the Jersey City station of the Pennsylvania Railroad. On the
way we encountered three men in a group, whom I knew with the intimacy
of long association. None of the three recognized me, and passed with
amused scrutiny. I called one of them by name, and he took to the gutter
as if thinking he was about to be held up. Then came recognition, and I
introduced Giuseppe. Suffice it to say that we missed the train we had
intended to take.
Being greatly pressed for time, I endeavored to persuade Giuseppe to go
alone on the next train to Newark, and in the station even found a
Newark man who kindly volunteered to pilot him to his uncle’s house; but
once again he flung his arms about me, and, to quiet him, I bought
another ticket and went along.
As we got off the car in Newark and turned into the Italian district,
the strains of bands fell on our ears, and soon we saw decorated arches
spanning the streets, crowds of people in holiday dress thronging the
way, and later a procession came by in which scores of little girls,
marching in white, preceded a half-dozen strong men bearing a platform
on which was a saint’s figure. The people were celebrating the feast day
of the patron saint of Avellino, and the figure was covered with purses,
medals, watches, etc., while heaped-up gifts lay at its feet.
As we neared the crowd some Avellino youngster saw us and ran ahead
shrieking that Giuseppe had come. Again there was a half-hour’s wild
embracing, laughing, and questioning, in which I found myself entirely
forgotten for the time being, and when attention was turned my way it
was of a very suspicious sort. Giuseppe told his relatives when we
reached their house (back rooms in a ramshackle old frame affair) of the
several things we had done in endeavoring to help him, and everything he
related made the people about more suspicious. All became silent but
Giuseppe. I felt constrained to go, feeling most unwelcome and somewhat
resenting the unaccountable attitude of Giuseppe’s friends.
As I shook hands with him, he drew forth some small money which had been
given him by some one in the crowd, and offered to recompense me in
part, and said that when his uncle returned he would send me the whole
of what I had expended for him. He had already given me back the seventy
lire. When I told him plainly, and made it emphatic, that what slight
kindness I may have had the opportunity of showing him was not for any
purpose of gain, and definitely refused the money, the people about
underwent a strange metamorphosis: they hugged me and patted me on the
back, two darted across the street for schooners of beer, a woman
brought sweet cakes, a brand new willow rocking-chair was brought from
another room for me to sit in, and for the remaining brief time I had to
spend with them I was treated royally. Giuseppe’s cousin led in a joint
apology for their coldness and concluded by saying,—
“You know American mans ain’t good to Eyetalyuns on’y he make de graft.”
When I got back to Houston Street there was a telegram from Philadelphia
saying that Genone and the four Socosa boys had arrived safely and would
go to work the next day, the four youths going out to the mines, and
Genone into a chair factory until he could find employment at his trade
of cheese-making. So I knew the party was all safely distributed, and my
wife and I began the process of returning to our former state of life.
It is strange, but true, that it took us a full week to change social
station. At first glance there would seem to be no bar in doing it in a
few hours. When my wife and I had gone with a part of our party to my
office on the day of our arrival, not a person in the place recognized
us, and a half-hour later the editor of _Leslie’s Magazine_ stood
talking with Antonio Squadrito for some minutes, with my wife and I
standing beside him, without recognizing us, so it is no wonder that
when I went to the storage warehouse to get our effects the clerk
refused to believe I was the man to whom the receipt I held had been
issued. Agents and janitors refused to show us apartments in the garb we
were in, and our clothes were in our stored trunks, so it is easy to see
why it was a week before we got away from Houston Street.