As we drew near to New York I was at first amused, and then
somewhat staggered, by the cautious and the grisly tales that went
the round.
You would have thought we were to land upon a cannibal
island. You must speak to no one in the streets, as they would not
leave you till you were rooked and beaten. You must enter a hotel
with military precautions; for the least you had to apprehend was
to awake next morning without money or baggage, or necessary
raiment, a lone forked radish in a bed; and if the worst befell,
you would instantly and mysteriously disappear from the ranks of
mankind.
I have usually found such stories correspond to the least modicum
of fact. Thus I was warned, I remember, against the roadside inns
of the Cevennes, and that by a learned professor; and when I
reached Pradelles the warning was explained - it was but the far-
away rumour and reduplication of a single terrifying story already
half a century old, and half forgotten in the theatre of the
events. So I was tempted to make light of these reports against
America. But we had on board with us a man whose evidence it would
not do to put aside. He had come near these perils in the body; he
had visited a robber inn. The public has an old and well-grounded
favour for this class of incident, and shall be gratified to the
best of my power.
My fellow-passenger, whom we shall call M'Naughten, had come from
New York to Boston with a comrade, seeking work. They were a pair
of rattling blades; and, leaving their baggage at the station,
passed the day in beer saloons, and with congenial spirits, until
midnight struck. Then they applied themselves to find a lodging,
and walked the streets till two, knocking at houses of
entertainment and being refused admittance, or themselves declining
the terms. By two the inspiration of their liquor had begun to
wear off; they were weary and humble, and after a great circuit
found themselves in the same street where they had begun their
search, and in front of a French hotel where they had already
sought accommodation. Seeing the house still open, they returned
to the charge. A man in a white cap sat in an office by the door.
He seemed to welcome them more warmly than when they had first
presented themselves, and the charge for the night had somewhat
unaccountably fallen from a dollar to a quarter. They thought him
ill-looking, but paid their quarter apiece, and were shown upstairs
to the top of the house. There, in a small room, the man in the
white cap wished them pleasant slumbers.
It was furnished with a bed, a chair, and some conveniences. The
door did not lock on the inside; and the only sign of adornment was
a couple of framed pictures, one close above the head of the bed,
and the other opposite the foot, and both curtained, as we may
sometimes see valuable water-colours, or the portraits of the dead,
or works of art more than usually skittish in the subject. It was
perhaps in the hope of finding something of this last description
that M'Naughten's comrade pulled aside the curtain of the first.
He was startlingly disappointed. There was no picture. The frame
surrounded, and the curtain was designed to hide, an oblong
aperture in the partition, through which they looked forth into the
dark corridor. A person standing without could easily take a purse
from under the pillow, or even strangle a sleeper as he lay abed.
M'Naughten and his comrade stared at each other like Vasco's
seamen, 'with a wild surmise'; and then the latter, catching up the
lamp, ran to the other frame and roughly raised the curtain. There
he stood, petrified; and M'Naughten, who had followed, grasped him
by the wrist in terror. They could see into another room, larger
in size than that which they occupied, where three men sat
crouching and silent in the dark. For a second or so these five
persons looked each other in the eyes, then the curtain was
dropped, and M'Naughten and his friend made but one bolt of it out
of the room and downstairs. The man in the white cap said nothing
as they passed him; and they were so pleased to be once more in the
open night that they gave up all notion of a bed, and walked the
streets of Boston till the morning.
No one seemed much cast down by these stories, but all inquired
after the address of a respectable hotel; and I, for my part, put
myself under the conduct of Mr. Jones. Before noon of the second
Sunday we sighted the low shores outside of New York harbour; the
steerage passengers must remain on board to pass through Castle
Garden on the following morning; but we of the second cabin made
our escape along with the lords of the saloon; and by six o'clock
Jones and I issued into West Street, sitting on some straw in the
bottom of an open baggage-wagon. It rained miraculously; and from
that moment till on the following night I left New York, there was
scarce a lull, and no cessation of the downpour. The roadways were
flooded; a loud strident noise of falling water filled the air; the
restaurants smelt heavily of wet people and wet clothing.
It took us but a few minutes, though it cost us a good deal of
money, to be rattled along West Street to our destination:
'Reunion House, No. 10 West Street, one minutes walk from Castle
Garden; convenient to Castle Garden, the Steamboat Landings,
California Steamers and Liverpool Ships; Board and Lodging per day
1 dollar, single meals 25 cents, lodging per night 25 cents;
private rooms for families; no charge for storage or baggage;
satisfaction guaranteed to all persons; Michael Mitchell,
Proprietor.' Reunion House was, I may go the length of saying, a
humble hostelry.
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