IN A NEW WORLD.
Jack Ogden stood like a boy in a dream, as the "Columbia" swept
gracefully into her dock and was made fast. Her swing about was helped
by the outgoing tide, that foamed and swirled around the projecting
piers.
A hurrying crowd of people was thronging out of the "Columbia," but
Jack's German friend did not join them.
"De ceety vill not roon avay," he said, calmly. "You comes mit me."
They went to the cabin for the ladies, and Jack noticed how much
baggage the rest were carrying. He took a satchel from Miss
Hildebrand, and then the Polish lady, with a grateful smile, allowed
him to take another.
"Dose crowds ees gone," remarked Mr. Guilderaufenberg. "Ve haf our
chances now."
Afterward, Jack had a confused memory of walking over a wide gang-plank
that led into a babel. Miss Hildebrand held him by his left arm while
the two other ladies went with Mr. Guilderaufenberg. They came out
into a street, between two files of men who shook their whips, shouted,
and pointed at a line of carriages. Miss Hildebrand told Jack that
they could reach their hotel sooner by the elevated railway.
"He look pale," she thought, considerately. "He did not sleep all
night. He never before travel on a steamboat!"
Jack meanwhile had a new sensation.
"This is the city!" he was saying to himself. "I'm really here. There
are no crowds, because it's Sunday,--but then!"
After walking a few minutes they came to a corner, where Mr.
Guilderaufenberg turned and said to Jack:
"Dees ees Proadvay. Dere ees no oder street in de vorlt dat ees so
long. Look dees vay und den look dat vay! So! Eh? Dot ees Proadvay.
Dere ees no oder city in de vorlt vere a beeg street keep Soonday!"
It was indeed a wonderful street to the boy from Crofield, and he felt
the wonder of it; and he felt the wonder of the Sunday quiet and of the
closed places of business.
[Illustration: _On Broadway, at last!_]
"There's a policeman," he remarked to Mr. Guilderaufenberg.
"So!" said the German, smiling; "but he ees a beople's boleeceman. Eef
he vas a king's boleeceman, I vas not here. I roon avay, or I vas lock
up. Jack, ven you haf dodge some king's boleecemen, like me, you vish
you vas American, choost like me now, und vas safe!"
"I believe I should," said Jack, politely; but his head was not still
for an instant. His eyes and his thoughts were busily at work. He had
expected to see tall and splendid buildings, and had even dreamed of
them. How he had longed and hoped and planned to get to this very
place! He had seen pictures of the city, but the reality was
nevertheless a delightful surprise.
Miss Hildebrand pointed out Trinity Church, and afterward St. Paul's.
"Maybe I'll go to one of those big churches, to-day," said Jack.
"Oh, no," said Miss Hildebrand. "You find plenty churches up-town.
Not come back so far."
"I shall know where these are, any way," Jack replied.
After a short walk they came to City Hall Square.
"There!" Jack exclaimed. "I know this place! It's just like the
pictures in my guide-book. There's the Post-office, the City
Hall,--everything!"
"Come," said Mr. Guilderaufenberg, beginning to cross the street. "Ve
must go ofer und take de elevated railvay."
"Come along, Meester Jack Ogden," added Mrs. Guilderaufenberg.
"There are enough people here now," said Jack, as they walked
along--"Sunday or no Sunday!"
"Of course," said Miss Hildebrand, pointing with a hand that lifted a
small satchel. "That's the elevated railway station over there, across
both streets. There, too, is where you go to the suspension bridge to
Brooklyn, over the East River. You see, when we go by. You see
to-morrow. Not much, now. I am so hungry!"
"I want to see everything," said Jack; "but I'm hungry, too. Why,
we're going upstairs!"
In a minute more Jack was sitting by an open window of an elevated
railway car. This was another entirely new experience, and Jack found
it hard to rid himself of the notion that possibly the whole
long-legged railway might tumble down or the train suddenly shoot off
from the track and drop into the street.
"Dees ees bretty moch American," said Mr. Guilderaufenberg, as Jack
stared out at the third-story windows of the buildings. "You nefer vas
here before? So! Den you nefer feels again choost like now. You ees
fery moch a poy. I dell you, dere is not soch railvays in Europe; I
vonce feel like you now. Dot vas ven I first come here. It vas not
Soonday; it vas a day for de flags. I dell you vat it ees: ven dot
American feels goot, he hang out hees flag. Shtars und shtripes--I
like dot flag! I look at some boleece, und den I like dot flag again,
for dey vas not hoont, hoont, hoont, for poor Fritz von
Guilderaufenberg, for dot he talk too moch!"
"It's pretty quiet all along. All the stores seem to be closed," said
Jack, looking down at the street below.
"Eet ees so shtill!" remarked Mr. Guilderaufenberg. "I drafel de vorlt
ofer und I find not dees Soonday. In Europe, it vas not dere to keep.
I dell you, ven dere ees no more Soonday, den dere ees no more America!
So! Choost you remember dot, my poy, from a man dot vas hoonted all
ofer Europe!"
Jack was quite ready to believe Mr. Guilderaufenberg. He had been used
to even greater quiet, in Crofield, for after all there seemed to be a
great deal going on.
The train they were in made frequent stops, and it did not seem long to
Jack before Mrs. Guilderaufenberg and the other ladies got up and began
to gather their parcels and satchels. Jack was ready when his friends
led the way to the door.
"I'll be glad to get off," he thought. "I am afraid Aunt Melinda would
say I was traveling on Sunday."
The conductor threw open the car door and shouted, and Mr.
Guilderaufenberg hurried forward exclaiming: "Come! Dees ees our
station!"
Jack had taken even more than his share of the luggage; and now his arm
was once more grasped by Miss Hildebrand.
"I'll take good care of her," he said to himself, as she pushed along
out of the cars. "All I need to do is to follow the rest."
He did not understand what she said to the others in German, but it
was: "I'll bring Mr. Ogden. He will know how to look out for himself,
very soon."
She meant to see him safely to the Hotel Dantzic, that morning; and the
next thing Jack knew he was going down a long flight of stairs, to the
sidewalk, while Miss Hildebrand was explaining that part of the city
they were in. Even while she was talking, and while he was looking in
all directions, she wheeled him suddenly to the left, and they came to
a halt.
"Hotel Dantzic," read Jack aloud, from the sign. "It's a tall
building; but it's very thin."
The ladies went into the waiting-room, while Jack followed Mr.
Guilderaufenberg into the office. The German was welcomed by the
proprietor as if he were an old acquaintance.
A moment afterward, Mr. Guilderaufenberg turned away from the desk and
said to Jack:
"My poy, I haf a room for you. Eet ees high oop, but eet ees goot; und
you bays only feefty cent a day. You bay for von veek, now. You puys
vot you eats vere you blease in de ceety."
The three dollars and a half paid for the first week made the first
break in Jack's capital of nine dollars.
"Any way," he thought, when he paid it, "I have found a place to sleep
in. Money'll go fast in the city, and I must look out. I'll put my
baggage in my room and then come down to breakfast."
"You breakfast mit us dees time," said Mr. Guilderaufenberg, kindly.
"Den you not see us more, maybe, till you comes to Vashington."
Jack got his key and the number of his room and was making his way to
the foot of a stairway when a very polite man said to him:
"This way, sir. This way to the elevator. Seventh floor, sir."
Jack had heard and read of elevators, but it was startling to ride in
one for the first time. It was all but full when he got in, and after
it started, his first thought was:
"How it's loaded! What if the rope should break!"
It stopped to let a man out, and started and stopped again and again,
but it seemed only a few long, breathless moments before the man in
charge of it said; "Seventh, sir!"
The moment Jack was in his room he exclaimed:
"Isn't this grand, though? It's only about twice as big as that
stateroom on the steamboat. I can feel at home here."
It was a pleasant little room, and Jack began at once to make ready for
breakfast.
He was brushing his hair when he went to the window, and as he looked
out he actually dropped the brush in his surprise.
"Where's my guide-book?" he said. "I know where I am, though. That
must be the East River. Away off there is Long Island. Looks as if it
was all city. Maybe that is Brooklyn,--I don't know. Isn't this a
high house? I can look down on all the other roofs. Jingo!"
He hurried through his toilet, meanwhile taking swift glances out of
the window. When he went out to the elevator, he said to himself:
"I'll go down by the stairs some day, just to see how it seems. A
storm would whistle like anything, round the top of this building!"
When he got down, Mr. Guilderaufenberg was waiting for him, and the
party of ladies went in to breakfast, in a restaurant which occupied
nearly all of the lower floor of the hotel.
"I understand," said Jack, good-humoredly, in reply to an explanation
from Miss Hildebrand. "You pay for just what you order, and no more,
and they charge high for everything but bread. I'm beginning to learn
something of city ways."
During all that morning, anybody who knew Jack Ogden would have had to
look at him twice, he had been so quiet and sedate; but the old,
self-confident look gradually returned during breakfast.
"Ve see you again at supper," said Mr. Guilderaufenberg, as they arose.
"Den ve goes to Vashington. You valks out und looks about. You easy
finds your vay back. Goot-bye till den."
Jack shook hands with his friends, and walked out into the street.
"Well, here I am!" he thought. "This is the city. I'm all alone in
it, too, and I must find my own way. I can do it, though. I'm glad
it's Sunday, so that I needn't go straight to work."
At that moment, the nine o'clock bells were ringing in two wooden
steeples in the village of Crofield; but the bell of the third steeple
was silent, down among the splinters of what had been the pulpit of its
own meeting-house. The village was very still, but there was something
peculiar in the quiet in the Ogden homestead. Even the children went
about as if they missed something or were listening for somebody they
expected.
There were nine o'clock bells, also, in Mertonville, and there was a
ring at the door-bell of the house of Mr. Murdoch, the editor.
"Why, Elder Holloway!" exclaimed Mrs. Murdoch, when she opened the
door. "Please to walk in."
"Thank you, Mrs. Murdoch, but I can't," he said, speaking as if
hurried, "Please tell Miss Ogden there's a class of sixteen girls in
our Sunday school, and the teacher's gone; and I've taken the liberty
of promising for her that she'll take charge of it."
"I'll call her," said Mrs. Murdoch.
"No, no," replied the elder. "Just tell her it's a nice class, and
that the girls expect her to come, and we'll be ever go much obliged to
her. Good-morning!"--and he was gone.
"Oh, Mrs. Murdoch!" exclaimed Mary, when the elder's message was given.
"I can't! I don't know them! I suppose I ought; but I'd have said no,
if I had seen him."
The elder had thought of that, perhaps, and had provided against any
refusal by retreating. As he went away he said to himself:
"She can do it, I know; if she does, it'll help me carry out my plan."
He looked, just then, as if it were a very good plan, but he did not
reveal it.
Mary Ogden persuaded Mrs. Murdoch to take her to another church that
morning, so that she need not meet any of her new class.
"I hope Jack will go to church in the city," she said; and her mother
said the same thing to Aunt Melinda over in Crofield.
Jack could not have given any reason why his feet turned westward, but
he went slowly along for several blocks, while he stared at the rows of
buildings, at the sidewalks, at the pavements, and at everything else,
great and small. He was actually leaving the world in which he had
been brought up--the Crofield world--and taking a first stroll around
in a world of quite another sort. He met some people on the streets,
but not many.
"They're all getting ready for church," he thought, and his next
thought was expressed aloud.
"Whew! what street's this, I wonder?"
He had passed row after row of fine buildings, but suddenly he had
turned into a wide avenue which seemed a street of palaces. Forward he
went, faster and faster, staring eagerly at one after another of those
elegant mansions of stone, of marble, or of brick.
"See here, Johnny," he suddenly heard in a sharp voice close to him,
"what number do you want?"
"Hallo," said Jack, halting and turning. "What street's this?"
He was looking up into the good-natured face of a tall man in a neat
blue uniform.
"What are you looking for?" began the policeman again. But, without
waiting for Jack's answer, he went on, "Oh, I see! You're a greeny
lookin' at Fifth Avenue. Mind where you're going, or you'll run into
somebody!"
"Is this Fifth Avenue?" Jack asked. "I wish I knew who owned these
houses."
"You do, do you?" laughed the man in blue. "Well, I can tell you some
of them. That house belongs to--" and the policeman went on giving
name after name, and pointing out the finest houses.
Some of the names were familiar to Jack. He had read about these men
in newspapers, and it was pleasant to see where they lived.
"See that house?" asked the policeman, pointing at one of the finest
residences. "Well, the man that owns it came to New York as poor as
you, maybe poorer. Not quite so green, of course! But you'll soon get
over that. See that big house yonder, on the corner? Well, the cash
for that was gathered by a chap who began as a deck-hand. Most of the
big guns came up from nearly nothing. Now you walk along and look out;
but mind you don't run over anybody."
"Much obliged," said Jack, and as he walked on, he kept his eyes open,
but his thoughts were busy with what the policeman had told him.
That was the very idea he had while he was in Crofield. That was what
had made him long to break away from the village and find his way to
the city. His imagination had busied itself with stories of poor
boys,--as poor and green as he, scores of them,--born and brought up in
country homes, who, refusing to stay at home and be nobodies, had
become successful men. All the great buildings he saw seemed to tell
the same story. Still he did say to himself once:
"Some of their fathers must have been rich enough to give them a good
start. Some were born rich, too. I don't care for that, though. I
don't know as I want so big a house. I am going to get along somehow.
My chances are as good as some of these fellows had."
Just then he came to a halt, for right ahead of him were open grounds,
and beyond were grass and trees. To the right and left were buildings.
"I know what this is!" exclaimed Jack. "It must be Central Park. Some
day I'm going there, all over it. But I'll turn around now, and find a
place to go to church. I've passed a dozen churches on the way."