With Poor Immigrants to America (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n THE ARRIVAL OF THE IMMIGRANT The day of the emigrants' arrival in New York was the nearest earthly likeness to the final Day of Judgment, when we have to prove our fitness to enter Heaven. Our trial might well have been prefaced by a few edifying reminders from a priest. It was the hardest day since leaving Europe and home. From 5 A.m., when we had breakfast, to three in the afternoon, when we landed at the Battery, we were driven in herds from one place to another, ranged into single files, passed in review before doctors, poked in the eyes by the eye-inspectors, cross-questioned by the pocket-inspectors, vice detectives, and blue-book compilers. Nobody had slept the night before. Those who approached America for the first time stood on the open deck and stared at the lights of Long Island. Others packed their trunks. Lovers took long adieus and promised to write one another letters. There was a hum of talking in the cabins, a continual pattering of feet in the gangways, a splashing of water in the lavatories where cleanly emigrants were trying towash their whole bodies at hand-basins. At last the bell rang for breakfast: we made that meal before dawn. When it was finished we all went up on the forward deck to see what America looked like by morning light. A little after six we were all chased to the after-deck and made to file past two detectives and an officer. The detectives eyed us; the officer counted to see that no one was hiding. At seven o'clock our boat lifted anchor and we glided up the still waters of the harbour. The whole prow was a black mass of passengers staring at the ferry-boats, the distant factories, and sky-scrapers. Every point of vantage was seized, and some scores of emigrants were clinging to the rigging. At length we came into sight of t...