On landing in New York, Markworth found it very similar to any other city of the old world in which he had been. There was no Eldorado here: the streets were not profusely strewn with gold for the needy to pick up. New York was only another temple of Mammon, where he who had money was a brave gentleman, and he who had none might starve and be hanged to him! For labouring men and mechanics, there is a wide field for industry in the Empire City and the adjacent country round about; but for clerks, "gentlemen," and Chevaliers d'Industrie, New York possesses few facilities, and it is harder work to pick up a living there than even in our own over-crowded London. Markworth's available funds melted down into greenbacks, and the wretched paper currency that forms the circulating medium of our transatlantic brethren, did not stretch very far. The essays he made to increase his store by his wits shrunk his purse still less. Although "enterprise" is one of the proverbial characteristics of Jonathan, still there is no country in the world, in spite of all the fabulous anecdotes we hear of swindling and "bogus" schemes, where adventurers without capital have such small chances of success. Jonathan may take in other people with his wooden nutmegs, pewter dollars, and Connecticut clocks, warranted to go for eight days, but a person is required to "get up extremely early in the morning" to get over him. The land of humbug, which possesses its native Barnums in shoals, is one of the "cutest countries in creation, I guess," and can "whip" any "coon" that comes from "tother side of Jordan." Markworth thought himself shrewd; but here, in the race of wits, he found himself a sluggard. He had at last to take to gambling, but even there he was no match for the smart Yankees with whom he played. Talk of Homburg and Baden-Baden! They cannot hold a candle to the Faro banks and other gambling hells of New York and Saratoga. Gambling is supposed to be contrary to the laws of the United States, but when their senators and law-makers practise it, it cannot be wondered that the people hold it up _en masse_, while justice winks at their doings. Finding chance no ally, all his endeavours to get employment vain, and the country with its people and belongings hateful to him, Markworth became possessed with that intense home longing, which none but those who have experienced it can appreciate. It is strange, the effects of that same _maladie du pays_, as the French call it. Numbers of conscripts die from it every year in Algiers, pining for their _belle France_ to the last; only the Ethiopian, or modern negro, seems unaffected by its influence. Even he, too, may long to be back again in his beloved Congo, when sweltering in the shambles of Cuba, where, thank goodness, slavery only now exists; there, however, it is also doomed to be mercifully blotted out.