HOW I WAS MADE A FOOL OF.
At length I am in the home of the free, where all men are equal, where
O'Donovan Rossa may seek to blast the glories of a thousand years, where
a Henry George may pave the way for an anarchy such as the world has
never yet seen, where even Jem Blaine, as his admirers term him, passes
for an honest man, and claims to have a firm grip on the Presidential
chair.
I am unfortunate on my landing. I have the name of one of Cook's hotels
on my lips, and as I know Mr. John Cook makes better terms for his
customers than they can do for themselves, I resolve to go there, but
every one tells me there is no such hotel as that I ask for in New York,
and I am taken to one which is recommended by a respectable-looking
policeman. Unfortunately, it is the head-quarters of the veteran corps
of the Army of the Potomac, who swarm all over the place, as they did all
over the South in the grand times of old. I am not fond of heroes;
heroes are the men who have kept out of danger, while their less
fortunate comrades have been mowed down, and who appropriate the honours
which belong often to the departed alone. Well, these heroes are holding
the fort so tightly that I resolve to leave my quarters and explore the
Broadway, one of the most picturesque promenades in the world. Suddenly
I meet a stranger, who asks me how I am. I reply he has the advantage of
me. "Oh," says he, "you were at our store last night." I reply that was
impossible. He tells me his name is Bodger, I tell him my name, which,
however, he does not catch, whereupon he shakes my hand again, says how
happy he is to have met me, and we part to meet no more. I go a few
steps farther, and go through the same process with another individual.
I bear his congratulations with fortitude, but when, a few minutes after,
the same thing occurs again, I begin to wish I were in Hanover rather
than in New York, and I resolve to seek out Cook's Agency without further
delay. Of course I was directed wrong, and that led to a disaster which
will necessarily shorten my visit to Uncle Sam. Perhaps I ought not to
tell my experience. People generally are silent when they have to tell
anything to their own discredit. If I violate that rule, it will be to
put people on their guard. If I am wrong in doing so, I hope the rigid
moralist will skip this altogether.
Suddenly, a young man came rushing up to me, with a face beaming with
joy. "Good morning, Mr. ---," he exclaimed; "I am so glad we have met."
I intimated that I did not recollect him. "Oh!" said he, "we came over
in the _Sarnia_ together." Well, the story was not improbable. Of the
1,000 on board the _Sarnia_ I could not be expected to remember all. "My
name is G.," mentioning a well-known banker in London, and then he began
to tell me of his travels, at what hotel he was staying, and finally
added that he had been presented with a couple of Longfellow's _Poems_,
handsomely bound, as a prize, and that he would be glad if I would accept
one. Well, as my copy of Longfellow was rather the worse for wear, I
told him I would accept it with pleasure. But I must come with him for
it. I did so, and while doing so learned from him that the prize had
been given in connection with a lottery scheme for raising money to build
a church down South. The idea seemed to me odd, but Brother Jonathan's
ways are not as ours, and I was rather pleased to find that I had thus a
new chance of seeing religious life, and of having something fresh to
write about. I am free to confess, as the great Brougham was wont to
say, I jumped at the offer. In a few minutes we were inside a
respectable-looking house, where a tall gentleman invited us to be
seated, regretting that the copies of Longfellow had not come home from
the binder's, and promising that we should have them by noon. Next he
unfolded what I thought was a plan of the proposed church, but which
proved to be a chart with figures--with prizes, as it seemed to me, to
all the figures. To my horror my friend took up the cards, and asked me
to select them for him. This I did, and he won a thousand dollars,
blessing me as he shook hands with me warmly, and saying that as I had
won half I must have half. Well, as the ticket had certain conditions,
and as I felt that it was rather hard on the church to take all that
money, I continued the game for a few minutes, my young friend being
eager that I should do so, till the truth dawned upon me that I had been
drawn into a swindlers' den, and that I and my friend were dupes, and I
resolved to leave off playing, much to the regret of my friend, who gave
the keeper of the table a cheque for 100 pounds, which he would pay for
me, as I would not, and thus by another effort retrieve my loss. There
was one spot only on the board marked blank, and that, of course, was
his. Burning with indignation I got up to go, my friend following me,
saying how much he regretted that he had led me into such a place,
offering to pay me half my losses when he returned to town, and begging
me not to say a word about the subject when I got back to London, as it
might get him into a row. I must say, so great has been my experience of
honour among men, and never having been in New York before, I believed in
that young man till we parted, as I did not see how he could have gained
all the knowledge he displayed of myself and movements unless he had
travelled with me as he said, and had never heard of Bunkum men. I had
not gone far, however, before I was again shaken by the hand by a
gentlemanly young fellow, who claimed to have met me at Montreal, where
he had been introduced to me as the son of Sir H--- A---. He had been
equally lucky--had got two books, and, as he was going back to Quebec
that very afternoon, would give me one of them if I would ride with him
as far as his lodgings. Innocently I told him my little tale. He
advised me to say nothing about it, as I had been breaking the law and
might get myself into trouble, and then suddenly recollecting he must get
his ticket registered, and saying that he would overtake me directly,
left me to go as far as the place of our appointed rendezvous alone.
Then the truth flashed on me that both my pretended friends were rogues,
and that I had been the victim of what, in New York, they call the Bunkum
men, who got 300 dollars out of Oscar Wilde, and a good deal more out of
Mr. Adams, formerly American Ambassador in England. I had never heard of
them, I own, and both the rogues had evidently got so much of my history
by heart that I might well fancy that they were what they described
themselves to be. As to finding them out to make them regorge that was
out of the question. Landlords and policemen seemed to take it quite as
a matter of course that the stranger in New York is thus to be done.
Since then I have hardly spoken to a Yankee, nor has a Yankee spoken to
me. I now understand why the Yankees are so reserved, and never seem to
speak to each other. They know each other too well. I now understand
also how the men you meet look so thin and careworn, and can't sleep at
nights. We are not all saints in London. Chicago boasts that it is the
wickedest city in the world, but I question whether New York may not
advance a stronger claim to the title. Yet what an Imperial city is New
York! How endless is its restless life! and how it runs over with the
lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and worldly pride! As I wandered
to the spot in Wall Street (where, by the bye, the stockbrokers and their
clerks are not in appearance to be compared to our own) I felt, sad as I
was, a thrill of pleasure run through me, as there Washington took the
oath as the first President of the young and then pure Republic; and
then, as the evening came on, I strolled up and down in the park-like
squares by means of which New York looks like a fairy world by night,
with the people sitting under the shade of the trees, resting after the
labours of the day; while afar the gay crowds are dining or supping at
Delmonico's, or wandering in and out of the great hotels which rear their
heads like palaces--as I looked at all that show and splendour (and in
London we have nothing to compare with it), one seemed to forget how
evanescent was that splendour, how unreal that show! I was reminded of
it, however, as I retired to rest, by the announcement that in one part
of my hotel was the way to the fire-escape, and by the notice in my
bedroom that the proprietor would not be responsible for my boots if I
put them outside the door to be blackened. In New York there seems to be
no confidence in anybody or anything.
As I told my story to a sweet young American lady she said, "Ah, you must
have felt very mean." "Not a bit of it," said I; "the meanness seemed to
be all on the other side." Americans talk English, so they tell me,
better than we do ourselves! Since then I have seen the same game played
elsewhere. In Australia I have heard of many a poor emigrant robbed in
this way. A plausible looking gentleman tried it on with me at Melbourne
when I was tramping up and down Burke Street one frying afternoon. He
had come with me, he said, by the steamer from Sydney to Melbourne. I
really thought I had met him at Brisbane. At any rate, his wife was ill,
and he was going back with her to London by the very steamer that I was
travelling by to Adelaide. Would I come with him as far as the Club? Of
course I said yes. The Melbourne Club is rather a first-class affair.
But somehow or other we did not get as far as the Club. My friend wanted
to call on a friend in a public-house on the way. Would I have a drink?
No, I was much obliged, but I did not want a drink. I sat down smoking,
and he came and sat beside me. Presently a decent-looking man came up to
my new friend with a bill. "Can't you wait till to-morrow?" asked my
friend. "Well, I am rather pressed for money," said the man,
respectfully. "Oh, then, here it is," said my friend, pulling a heap of
gold, or what looked like it, out of his pocket. "By the bye," said he,
turning to me, "I am a sovereign short; can you lend me one?" No, I
could not. Could I lend him half-a-sovereign? No; I could not. Could I
lend him five shillings? I had not even that insignificant sum to spare.
"Oh, it does not matter," said my friend; "I can get the money over the
way, I will just go and fetch it, and will be back in five minutes." And
he and his confederate went away together to be seen no more by me.
Certainly he was not on board the _Austral_, as I took my passage in her
to Adelaide.
As I left I met a policeman.
"Have you any rogues in these parts?" I innocently asked.
"Well, we have a few. There was one from New York a little while ago,
but he had to go back home. He said he was no match for our Melbourne
rogues at all." It was well that I escaped scot-free. On the steamer in
which I returned there was a poor third-class passenger who had lost his
all in such a way. He was fool enough to let the man treat him to a
drink, and that little drink proved rather a costly affair. All his
hard-earned savings had disappeared.