young that he had never done anything at home but sit on the wharves and
watch the ships come in and out of the great harbor of Genoa. He never
had wished to depart with these ships when they sailed away, nor
wondered greatly as to where they went. He was content with the wharves
and with the narrow streets near by, and to look up from the bulkheads
at the sailors working in the rigging, and the 'long-shoremen rolling
the casks on board, or lowering great square boxes into the holds.

He would have liked, could he have had his way, to live so for the rest
of his life; but they would not let him have his way, and coaxed him on
a ship to go to the New World to meet his uncle. He was not a real
uncle, but only a make-believe one, to satisfy those who objected to
assisted immigrants, and who wished to be assured against having to
support Guido, and others like him. But they were not half so anxious to
keep Guido at home as he himself was to stay there.

The new uncle met him at Ellis Island, and embraced him affectionately,
and put him in an express wagon, and drove him with a great many more of
his countrymen to where Mulberry Street makes a bend and joins Hester.
And in the Bend Guido found thousands of his fellows sleeping twenty in
a room and over-crowded into the street: some who had but just arrived,
and others who had already learned to swear in English, and had their
street-cleaning badges and their peddler's licenses, to show that they
had not been overlooked by the kindly society of Tammany, which sees
that no free and independent voter shall go unrewarded.

New York affected Guido like a bad dream. It was cold and muddy, and
the snow when it fell turned to mud so quickly that Guido believed they
were one and the same. He did not dare to think of the place he know as
home. And the sight of the colored advertisements of the steamship lines