Here I was at last in America, and was soon out upon New York
streets, spying for things foreign. The place had to me an air of
Liverpool; but such was the rain that not Paradise itself would have
looked inviting. We were a party of four, under two umbrellas; Jones
and I and two Scots lads, recent immigrants, and not indisposed to
welcome a compatriot. They had been six weeks in New York, and
neither of them had yet found a single job or earned a single
halfpenny. Up to the present they were exactly out of pocket by the
amount of the fare.
The lads soon left us. Now I had sworn by all my gods to have such a
dinner as would rouse the dead; there was scarce any expense at which
I should have hesitated; the devil was in it, but Jones and I should
dine like heathen emperors. I set to work, asking after a
restaurant; and I chose the wealthiest and most gastronomical-looking
passers-by to ask from. Yet, although I had told them I was willing
to pay anything in reason, one and all sent me off to cheap, fixed-
price houses, where I would not have eaten that night for the cost of
twenty dinners. I do not know if this were characteristic of New
York, or whether it was only Jones and I who looked un-dinerly and
discouraged enterprising suggestions.
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